The earthquake in Haiti is the worst disaster ever confronted by the United Nations, a spokeswoman said on Saturday, pointing out that the catastrophe has left affected regions with little infrastructure.”This is a historic disaster.We have never been confronted with such a disaster in the UN memory.
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. She noted that at least local government structures remained after the 2004 tsunami hit Indonesia’s Aceh province, but in Haiti, the town of Leogane, for example, had lost all its public services in the earthquake.
The earthquake “has decapitated the city,” said Byrs, pointing out that this made coordination of aid efforts all the more difficult. Byrs had earlier said that a UN assessment team surveying towns to the west of Port-au-Prince found that up to 90 per cent of the buildings in Leogane had been damaged or destroyed by Tuesday’s 7.0 magnitude quake.
“No local government infrastructure remains,” she said.Around 2,40,000 people are estimated to have died in the massive earthquake that hit Haiti.
The Haitian government has said that while 40,000 people have been buried, at least a hundred thousand are still under the rubble.
Authorities have also said that the main concern now is that desperation is turning to violence.
There are reports of gangs of robbers preying on survivors desperately awaiting aid. Police are being rushed to the areas from where reports of robberies are coming in.
Some looting broke out in downtown Port-au-Prince, with a body burned and at least two shots fired. Three days after the earthquake, governments across the world were pouring relief supplies and medical teams into the quake-hit Caribbean state, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.
But due to huge logistical hurdles, including a clogged airport and badly damaged port, and the sheer scale of the destruction, the aid was not yet reaching the victims.
