15 January - Jasmine Pierre and 10 members of her family have been camped out in a park since Tuesday. She has not seen any food deliveries, spotted rescue workers or noticed any signs of international relief. ``Nobody is coming,'' she said. ``I think only God is in charge. The government should be here, any government. There is no government in the palace right now. I don't even really know if Haiti has a government today.'' U.S. Southern Command in Miami reported Friday afternoon that some aid was finally trickling into the ravaged city of 2 million. But the 22-year-old's feelings of frustration were shared by many aid workers, relief agencies and medics, who say that three full days after an earthquake devastated this nation it is still not clear who is in charge of relief efforts. Nobody had seen any.

No single federal government office building is still standing, and officials are looking for a proper headquarters from which to organize relief operations, first lady Elizabeth Préval said. Some Haitian leaders lost their lives. Others lost family or property, leaving a grief-stricken leadership awaiting an international community that Friday was still mobilizing to fill the void. ``The government seems to be just waiting for help,'' said Gregory Gue, a Jacmel doctor who came to Port-au-Prince to volunteer for the Red Cross and was aghast at the conditions he encountered. ``People die waiting for help. I am angry. Angry, but everyone is also very sad. It is clear the government had no emergency plan.'' Gue was providing aid Friday to the injured, including a woman who needed an emergency C-section to remove her dead 8-month-old fetus. He was working out of a muddy parking lot.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, however, defended the pace of progress. ``The international community reacted quite quickly in view of the circumstances and the scale of the hit,'' he said. ``Everyone is still today in the streets -- and that includes the government. Because three-quarters of the government buildings are destroyed, that doesn't mean the government isn't doing its work.'' Moreover, starting a day after the quake, Bellerive said, the remnants of the government held morning coordination meetings with U.N. representatives, foreign ambassadors and international agencies. (Miami Herald)

15 January - At a press conference, Haiti's minister of health, Alex Larsen, has announced that an estimated 750,000 - 1 million people are homeless, that more than 50,000 have died, and around 250,000 are injured. (Metropole)

15 January - In Port-au-Prince, Stefano Zannini, the head of mission for Médecins sans Frontières, said his staff had been working around the clock under canvas to perform life-saving surgery on hundreds of people with dangerous open fractures. Thousands more were still awaiting help, and at least 100 had died before their wounds could be tended. “People are still coming to our structures by any way they can, in cars, on motorbikes, even being carried on doors used as stretchers,” he said. “We have thousands ready for surgical interventions.”

With the city’s tiny airport overwhelmed, aid organisations were struggling to find alternative routes to bring in vital medical supplies. Lorries bearing tarpaulins, high-energy food, water and medical supplies were beginning to reach the city by road yesterday after being flown into the Dominican Republic. With Port-au-Prince’s commercial docks destroyed by the quake, hopes of bringing sea cargo rest on the tiny northern port of Cap Haïtien — the only means by which to bring in the quantities of food required by hungry survivors. (The Times)

15 January - In the Jacmel region around 2,000 families has been affected leaving around 20,000 people in very bad conditions. For the moment we have an estimate of 150 deaths but some children are still under a school building. We have set up 4 camps one of them with 4,000 persons. We are doing our best to manage the situation in Jacmel with the assistance of the UN and local authorities. But we are still traumatized and are waiting for humanitarian assistance. The earth is still shaking at night.

Early at 5am every morning, for two hours there are like 500 - 600 people on the streets singing religious songs, dancing and blessing God for being alive. It is like a parade, the local way of healing their pain, it is vey impressive. A real therapy for these victims which have lost everything except their faith. (Cine Institute, Jacmel)

15 January - One group trying to free a man trapped in the rubble of the tax office looked up wearily at the planes flying overhead. "We hear on the radio that rescue teams are coming from the outside, but nothing is coming. We only have our fingers to look for survivors," said Jean-Baptiste Lafontin Wilfried. Despite the launch of the massive aid operation, there is no sign of heavy-lifting equipment among the rubble even as tons of material and badly needed supplies flooded the airport.

The rapidly decomposing bodies are also posing a major problem. Port-au-Prince resident Jacky Dodard says corpse disposal has been random and chaotic. "What is happening is that there is no help in the streets. Personally, I haven't seen any help," she said. "So everybody is trying to drop their dead bodies somewhere. They don't know what to do with the dead bodies."

Haitian officials have warned the overall death toll may top 100,000 as a result of the powerful quake that ripped across the poorest nation in the Americas. The International Red Cross said the quake, the largest in the Caribbean island nation in more than 150 years, has killed between 40,000 and 50,000 people.

"If international aid doesn't come, the situation will deteriorate quickly. We need water and food urgently," said Haitian survivor Lucille, still dazed by the scenes of devastation and carnage. Witnesses say there has already been some looting in the city. "More doctors, fewer journalists," one man yelled angrily, shaking his fists at a foreign media crew.

Haitian native and hip hop star Wyclef Jean has described conditions as "the apocalypse" and said Haiti needed to raise $1 million a day to survive. "We spent the day picking up dead bodies. All day that's what we did. There's so much bodies in the streets that the morgues are filled up, the cemeteries are filled up," he told Fox News. Doctors were struggling to treat the vast numbers of sick and injured, with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontiers speaking of patients with "severe traumas, head wounds, crushed limbs" and burns. (ABC News)

  PAYING THE PRICE FOR ENDING SLAVERY, COLONIALISM.