Trocaire Communicator Michelle Hough blogs from Haiti

We arrive at Port-au-Prince airport over 50 hours after we set off. I’d like a hot bath, a cup of tea and a nice lie down. It’s over 30 degrees and very humid. People are everywhere. Planes are taking off and landing every ten minutes or so. Big pallets of water and food are being dragged across the tarmac. Aid workers are arriving along with TV crews and medical equipment. Now the airport has finally reopened people may finally start to get help.

As we’re waiting to be picked up I start talking to a Haitian woman who had come back from America to see her mother just before the earthquake. She said that all around her house buildings collapsed during the tremors. There were families she knew where there was just one person left alive. Walking through the streets she’d seen bodies of dead children that no one had yet removed.

The streets of Port-au-Prince are packed with people and rubble. People are wearing masks and hankerchiefs to cover their noses and mouths and those who haven’t have strong-smelling cream smeared under their noses. In areas where many people are still lying below the rubble, we’re told, the smell of the dead in the heat is over-powering.

There are buildings that have totally collapsed next to buildings that are totally fine. Impromptu camps have been set up in many places where there is an open space. Even people whose houses haven’t collapsed sleep in camps or in the streets because they are afraid of the aftershocks.

The Caritas Haiti centre is still standing. That’s where we’re staying. People are staying in tents in the courtyard even though there are rooms available. Me and Alistair (Alistair Dutton, Caritas Internationalis Humanitarian Director)  take rooms on the second floor. There’s no running water, but we are brought buckets to use for washing. Many people across the city don’t even have drinking water, let alone the luxury of having a wash.

We meet with staff of Caritas Haiti and Catholic Relief Services’ (both Trócaire partners) to discuss the response to the crisis. They went back to work immediately after the earthquake. As they tell us about how they’ve started giving people help with food and clothes, I start to realise how they themselves are victims of the disaster. Caritas staff have been sleeping outside since the earthquake. Many of them look exhausted. At night there is chanting in the streets and lots of noise.

The woman who brings me sheets at the Caritas centre looks so careworn. I ask her if she’s ok. She gives me a sad smile and says she’s ok. I start to chat to her and then she tells me what’s wrong. “My husband was crushed in a building during the earthquake. He’s no longer with us. I have two children who are sleeping downstairs in a tent. My daughter turned six on 7th of January and now her father is dead.”