A story from Haiti - Haiti earthquake survivors get more food and water...



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Precious water, food and early glimmers of hope began reaching parched and hungry earthquake survivors Saturday on the streets of the ruined Haitian capital, but the island's despair threatened to spark a frenzy in places.

"People are so desperate for food that they are going crazy," said accountant Henry Ounche, standing in a crowd of hundreds who fought one another as U.S. military helicopters clattered overhead carrying aid.

Across the hilly, steamy city, people choked on the stench of death, and hope faded by the hour for finding many more victims alive in the rubble, four days after Tuesday's catastrophic earthquake.

Still, here and there, the murmur of buried victims spurred rescue crews on, even as aftershocks threatened to finish off crumbling buildings.

"No one's alive in there," a woman sobbed outside the wrecked Montana Hotel.

But hope wouldn't die. "We can hear a survivor!" search crew chief Alexander Luque of Namibia later reported. His men dug on.

Nobody knew how many were dead. In a fresh estimate, the Pan American Health Organization said 50,000 to 100,000 people perished in the quake. Haiti's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, told The Associated Press that 100,000 would "seem to be the minimum." Truckloads of corpses were being trundled to mass graves.

A U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman declared the quake the worst disaster the international organization has ever faced, since so much government and U.N. capacity in the country was demolished. In that way, Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva, it's worse than the cataclysmic Asian tsunami of 2004: "Everything is damaged."






Read further
Acknowledgements: Associated Press

Prayers at Scott Base in the Antarctic to remember Mt Erebus crash thirty years ago.

Erebus tragedy: The quest for truth.

A prayer will be said and a period of silence observed at Scott Base around 12.50pm today to mark the moment 30 years ago when an Air New Zealand plane crashed in Antarctica.

All 257 passengers and crew on Flight 901, which was on a sightseeing trip from Auckland on November 28, 1979, died when the DC10 struck the foothills of Mt Erebus.

Memorial services were being held at 11am today at Scott Base, from which Erebus is visible, and in Auckland and Christchurch.

Scott Base co-ordinator Yvonne Costar said 60 to 80 people were expected at the service at the base.

Among them would be staff from the United States research centre at McMurdo Station.

"We have quick a few people coming from McMurdo," she said.

"Some of them were here 30 years ago."

The service will be held indoors in the dining room, and others who will be present include six people who lost family members in the crash.

The six - among them Pip Collins, daughter of the pilot, Captain Jim Collins - were drawn by ballot to fly on a US Air Force C10 cargo plane for the anniversary.

Ms Costar said the service would be followed by lunch and then the 12.50pm ceremony, which would be outside at the flagpole.

Earlier today, Air NZ chief executive Rob Fyfe, flight attendants and pilots attended a wreath laying ceremony at the Erebus Crew Memorial Garden at Auckland Airport.

Also remembered were the five New Zealanders and two Germans who lost their lives in an Air NZ Airbus crash in the south of France a year ago today.

Family members of those New Zealanders have gathered in Perpignan for commemorations there.

Acknowledgements: NZPA