POUT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI (AP) -- The badly damaged seaport and airport are hindering efforts to get aid to earthquake-ravaged Haiti, but a massive movement is under way nonetheless.
Some 800 troops and a Navy aircraft carrier are on the way to provide the first major influx of U.S. forces since Tuesday's catastrophe.
The troops will help deliver aid and provide security in a country where the government has all but disintegrated and the national police are nowhere to be found. The troops are expected to arrive today.
Meanwhile, the living and the dead share the same spaces -- sidewalks, public plazas and hospitals. The stench of death adds to the overwhelming gloom.
A Catholic Relief Services representative calls the scene "beyond description."
U.N. keeping peace after Haiti police 'vanished'
A U.N. official has been detailing the lawless and chaotic situation in Haiti's capital.
He says the global aid effort is just getting started, but many people have lost everything and are "slowly getting more angry and impatient."
The U.N. peacekeeping mission spokesman says one problem is that the Haitian national police have "simply vanished." He says that's leaving it up to U.N. forces to keep law and order in Haiti's devastated capital.
That's even as rescue efforts continue at the collapsed U.N. headquarters in Port-au-Prince. About 100 people are believed buried in the rubble.
Spokesman David Wimhurst also described having to grab on to furniture as Tuesday's quake "violently" shook the U.N. offices. He says he and more than a dozen other people managed to escape the wrecked building through his third-story window on a "rather rickety ladder."
Quake aid trickles through Haiti's cramped airport
U.S. military air traffic controllers are scrambling to keep earthquake aid flowing into Haiti's main entry point, its airport.
They're trying to do this without the use of an airport control tower or radar, and amid struggles over fuel, tarmac space and even staircases to access the planes.
The space crunch left some two dozen planes circling for more than two hours yesterday. Many of them had to be diverted to Santo Domingo or Florida.
Thursday's arrivals were dominated by rescue crews leading search dogs and military operations toting supplies and communications equipment.
Doctors Without Borders was able to bring in medical supplies and body bags, but other groups had no luck. The Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse had three charter planes turned back.
U.S. federal officials had halted nonmilitary flights for eight hours yesterday at the request of the Haitian government. That order has been lifted.
(Copyright ©2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
