Desperation amid quake aid logjam
The world still cannot get enough food and water to the hungry and thirsty, one week after an earthquake shattered Haiti's capital.
The airport remains a bottleneck and the port is a shambles. The Haitian government is invisible, nobody has taken firm charge, and the police have largely given up.
Even as US troops landed in Seahawk helicopters on the manicured lawn of the National Palace in Port-au-Prince yesterday, the colossal efforts to help Haiti are proving inadequate because of the scale of the disaster and the limitations of the world's governments.
Expectations exceeded what money, will and military might have been able to achieve so far in the face of unimaginable calamity.
"God has abandoned us! The foreigners have abandoned us!" yelled Micheline Ursulin, tearing at her hair as she rushed past a large pile of decaying bodies. Three of her children died in the quake and her surviving daughter is in the hospital with broken limbs and a serious infection.
Rescue groups continue to work, even though time is running out for those buried by the quake.
Those who survived the quake from the beginning but had lost their homes and possessions were growing desperate as they camped out in the streets and in a plaza across from the National Palace.
"We need so much. Food, clothes. We need everything. I don't know whose responsibility it is, but they need to give us something soon," said Sophia Eltime, a 29-year-old mother of two who has been living under a bedsheet with seven members of her extended family.
It is not just Haitians questioning why aid has been so slow for victims of one of the worst earthquakes in history: an estimated 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless.
Officials in France and Brazil and aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders have complained of bottlenecks, skewed priorities and a crippling lack of leadership and co-ordination.