Haiti quake toll now more than 217,000

11 Feb 2010, 3:55 pm   -   Source: AAP
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The death toll from last month's Haiti earthquake has risen to above 217,000, as the focus turned to providing shelter for the homeless before heavy rains come.

The death toll from last month's Haiti earthquake has risen to more than 217,000, while the focus turned to providing shelter for the homeless before heavy rains and the hurricane season come.

"There are people who put forth the figure of 230,000, but we have counted a bit more than 217,000. These are verified figures," Interior Minister Paul Bien-Aime said.

Earlier, the government said it buried 170,000 bodies in mass graves in the month since the January 12 quake.

The communications ministry said a statement from President Rene Preval that 270,000 bodies were buried contained a typographical error, and that the real count is 170,000.

The government also declared a day of mourning for Friday to mark one month since the quake struck, bringing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale to the desperately poor Caribbean nation.

"There are around 1.2 million people without shelter," David Pappiat of the British Red Cross told a summit in Montreal attended by Red Cross and Red Crescent delegations from 23 countries and two international bodies.

"We're trying to set up shelters that can withstand the coming rainy season, the hurricane season, and that can last three to five years," commented Haitian Red Cross president Michael Amedee Gedeon.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has deployed some 600 people to Haiti to help with relief efforts.

"Shelter is a huge issue," agreed Lewis Lucke, the US ambassador to Haiti, speaking in Port-au-Prince.

"Nothing really compares in terms of (this) monumental challenge, for right now and for the coming weeks before the rainy season and months before the hurricane season."

Lucke said relief workers aimed to supply everyone with plastic sheeting by May 1, the nominal start of the rainy season.

The relief effort received a boost from private donors, whom the United Nations said had given more money than the single biggest national donor, the United States.

Individuals and businesses were said on Wednesday to have given 118 million dollars to help quake victims since the disaster, more than the 115 million donated by the US government.

Still, massive problems loom, and the security situation in the makeshift camps and across the Port-au-Prince remained precarious.

Around noon more than 50 looters besieged a quake-hit supermarket, just hours after a fresh part of it collapsed as contractors searched for the remains of those buried by the January 12 quake.

Half a dozen shots were fired as owners tried to disperse the mob - some of whom were armed with knifes - as it raided the supermarket's underground depot, making off with toy cars, garden chairs and other goods.

On Tuesday night rescue workers spent around six hours trying to dig out another group of looters believed trapped in the depot when its roof fell in, bringing slabs of tangled steel and concrete down on top of them.

The five-story building was popular with well-off Haitians and was the capital's largest supermarket. It was badly damaged in the quake, but remained partly standing.

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