I am very thankful I am alive tonight

[Mothernature]

This disaster has affected me profoundly. I will never be the same.

These poor people did not project this misery upon themselves.

Imagine the horror of being so hurt, hungry, and ignored. To lay on the street dying with so few possessions stolen and unable to do anything about it.

All the petty stuff over trades, coupons, stores, etc.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The old lady crawls in the dirt, wailing for her pills. The elderly man lies motionless as rats pick at his overflowing diaper.


There is no food, water or medicine for the 84 surviving residents of the Port-au-Prince Municipal Nursing Home, barely a mile (1 1/2 kilometers) from the airport where a massive international aid effort is taking shape.


"Help us, help us," 69-year-old Mari-Ange Levee begged Sunday, lying on the ground with a broken leg and ribs. A cluster of flies swarmed the open fracture in her skull.


One man had already died, and administrator Jean Emmanuel said more would follow soon unless water and food arrive immediately.


"I appeal to anybody to bring us anything, or others won't live until tonight," he said in the morningmotioning toward five men and women who were having trouble breathing, a sign that the end was near.



Hours later, an elderly woman succumbed.


The dead man was Joseph Julien, a 70-year-old diabetic who was pulled from the partially collapsed building and passed away Thursday for lack of food.


His rotting body lies on a mattress, nearly indistinguishable from the living around him, so skinny and tired they seemed to be simply waiting for death.


With six residents killed in the quake, the institution now has 25 men and 60 women camped outside their former home. Some have a mattress in the dirt to lie on. Others don't.


Madeleine Dautriche, 75, said some of the residents had pooled their money to buy three packets of pasta, which the dozens of pensioners shared on Thursday, their last meal. Since there was no drinking water, some didn't touch the noodles because they were cooked in gutter water.


Dautriche noted that many residents wore diapers that hadn't been changed since the quake.


"The problem is, rats are coming to it," she said.


Though very little food aid had reached Haitians anywhere by Sunday, Emmanuel said the problem was made worse at the nursing home because it is located near Place de la Paix, an impoverished downtown neighborhood.


The hospice, known as "Hospice Municipal," is in the Delmas-2 neighborhood, near a rundown soccer stadium, stuck between the port and Bel-Air, traditionally one of Haiti's most violent and dangerous slums.


Thousands of homeless slum dwellers have pitched their makeshift tents on the nursing home's ground, in effect shielding the elderly patients from the outside world with a tense maze of angry people, themselves hungry and thirsty.


"I'm pleading for everyone to understand that there's a truce right now, the streets are free, so you can come through to help us," said Emmanuel, 27, one of the rare officials not to have fled the squalor and mayhem. He insisted that foreign aid workers wouldn't be in danger if they tried to cross through the crowd to reach the elderly group.
Violent scuffles erupted Saturday in the adjacent soccer stadium when U.S. helicopters dropped boxes of military rations and Gatorade. But none of this trickle of help had reached the nursing home residents, who said some refugees have robbed them of what little they had.


Dautriche, who was sitting on the ground because of her broken back, held out an empty blue plastic basin. "My underwear and my money were in there," she said, sobbing. "Children stole it right in front of me and I couldn't move."


The area was an eery corner of silence within the clamor of crying babies and toddlers running naked in the mud. Guarding the little space was Phileas Julien, 78, a blind man in a wheelchair who shouted at anybody approaching to turn back.


During moments of lucidity, Julien said he was better off than other pensioners because the medicine he was taking provided sustenance. A moment later, he threw his arms out to hug a passer-by he mistook for his grandson.


Also trying to guard the center was Jacqueline Thermiti, 71, who couldn't stand because of pain but who brandished her walking stick when children approached.


"Of all the wars and revolutions and hurricanes, this quake is the worst thing God has ever sent us," Thermiti said.


Initially, Thermiti and others believed their relatives would come to feed them, because many live in the slums nearby. "But I don't even know if my children are alive," she said.


Thermiti was surprisingly feisty for someone who hadn't eaten since Tuesday. She attributed that to experience with hunger during earlier hardships.


"But I was younger, and now there's no water either," she said.
She predicted that unlike other pensioners, she could still hold out for at least another day.


"Then if the foreigners don't come (with aid)," she said, "it will be up to

baby Jesus."


One of the struggling residents had died by nightfall Sunday, when Associated Press journalists returned to the nursing home. Tsida-Edith Andre, about 90, had been too old and too weak to hold out through the afternoon heat, said Nixon Plantain, a hospice cleaner who was planning to spent the night there.


Next to him, Michele Lina, 22, was spoon-feeding boiled rice to her paralyzed grandfather in a wheelchair. Plantain said she was the first relative to have come with food. He helped Lina give out tiny mouthfuls to others.


That food, along with a carton of water bottles brought by an AP reporter, was the only aid the residents received Sunday, Plantain said.
The cleaner-turned-caretaker tried to pour a trickle of water into the mouth of Mesalia Joseph, one of a small group he said probably wouldn't make it through the night.


"Don't give me any," Joseph mumbled, saying she was too hungry to drink.


Curled in a fetal position, she seemed to have already given up


Elderly quake victims forgotten and starving in Haiti.

[mom2lucas]

This story just breaks my heart!

[kval07]

That is just absolutely terrible. It breaks my heart.

And to think people on the local radio were complaining the other day saying Detroit was worse off than Haiti and needed the aid money more!!

[mom2lucas]

Who is this radio person in saying Detroit needs the relief money worse? Ugh. I know we're trying to get some aid to Haiti through a missionary in Haiti, and we are being told it will be months before she sees a dime or the first bag of rice! I'm not clear on who is saying it will be months before the aid reaches those in need, because I received this information in our ladies' group meeting today. They are working on a cargo trailer to go down ASAP. Monetary donations have already been made, and we were told those would not reach their destinations until Saturday!

[Lucky1307]

This is a horrible situation. And it does make one stop and look at their own life. It's just sad that what help there is isn't getting fast enough.

[Mothernature]

This is a horrible situation. And it does make one stop and look at their own life. It's just sad that what help there is isn't getting fast enough.

We all have to accept that some will die. A whole city collapsed. There isn't enough time to free everyone. Allowing people to die in the streets 1/2 mile from the airport is inexcusable.

[Lucky1307]

We all have to accept that some will die. A whole city collapsed. There isn't enough time to free everyone. Allowing people to die in the streets 1/2 mile from the airport is inexcusable.

ITA and I doubt the "reasoning" behind not getting help there is going to be good. I can't imagine living in the conditions they did before this. The local news station took a crew to Haiti to deliver the "Meals from the Heartland" last year and you could see the desperation in their eyes and actions. I'm sure that desperation is worse now.

[mama22qts]

I have been brought to tears many times since this happened. I have given to the Clinton/Bush fund and I have prayed so many times. I still feel so helpless.

It's absolutely hell on earth.

[mom2lucas]

Some of my acquaintances were involved with an orphanage in Haiti. All the children are safe, but two doctors are still missing and the kids are having trouble getting care because their doctors are MIA. I am really stuck on the "why" as in "why is the help not getting there faster?" when people are pouring money into funds and offering to travel to help.

[AshburnMom]

I'm sitting here watching CNN. I can't seem to stop. It's just so horrible. I've donated money but just feel like there should be something else to do. Times like this I wish I had gone to med school so I could volunteer.