'Too many people died, and you can smell it in the air,' one survivor says.
By Erik Parker
16-year-old Jean McKenzie wears a mask to block the smell of dead bodies
Photo: Erik Parker
Erik Parker is a freelance journalist who was in Haiti when the earthquake struck on Tuesday. You can read his tweets and view his photos at Twitter.com/TheParkerReport.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — There are dead bodies lying on Haiti's street and they cannot be ignored. After Tuesday's devastating 7.0 earthquake, thousands of people died in buildings and on the walkways — their faces exposed, their eyes sometimes slightly open. The next day many were covered with sheets, shielded from the sun and from sight. Now, from under the flimsy coverings, the stench from their decaying bodies rises up and attacks the air with a pungent odor that causes the locals to cover their faces and noses with whatever they can find.
"I wear this mask because it's starting to smell badly with all the dead bodies," Jean McKenzie, a 16-year-old resident of Port-au-Prince's Carrefour Feuilles district, said on Thursday. He had a red bandana tied around his face to block out the smell, but there is little that can block out the stench. "It started smelling really, really bad at noon today," he said.
Even while the Haitian Police have begun to collect bodies for identification at the morgue, McKenzie said, they have much more work to do.
McKenzie is one of many Haitians who are trying to live with the dead in ways they didn't expect just days ago. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake left many bodies trapped under rubble and displaced many residents. The bodies that were pulled out of the wreckage rested on the sidewalks and roadways. There were too many wounded for authorities to contend with the dead. So they lie there while people walk the street wearing bandanas, surgical masks or even napkins.
Roberto Bonsues, 18, has tied a tank top around his neck in order to keep out the smell. I talked with him in the same downtown area where I met McKenzie. Fortunately, no one in his family was killed when his building collapsed. But that does not mean he is unaffected. "Too many people died," he said. "And you can smell it in the air."
The day after the earthquake, I was walking through Port-au-Prince's downtown area. The bodies of two women lay motionless on the street; flies darted around their bodies. Across the street, there was a United Nations fort. No soldiers or police officers where visible in the area, except from the watch post behind a wall, across the street. I walked over and asked the soldier if he could do anything about the dead at their front doors. He ducked away and an English-speaking woman came to speak to me through the gate.
"There are many dead bodies," she said. "Walk around the other side. You will see them. There are dead bodies everywhere. We have sick people here. We cannot take any more in here."
Disaster is nothing new in today's Haiti, which is plagued with economic, social and natural strife. The country has a longstanding history of immense poverty (about 70 percent lives on less than $2 per day), the Republic's thorny political history is rife with coups d'etat and rampant corruption, and natural disasters, particularly hurricanes, run rampant. But Tuesday's devastating quake has brought death counts that range from 50,000 (according to Red Cross) to 100,000 (according to Haitian government estimates) and possibly more — but no one knows the true count.
"This is worse than [the mid-1990s genocide in] Kigali, Rwanda," said Ken Walton, a former U.N. Rwanda Emergency Officer agent, now helping to evacuate people from Haiti for International SOS. He said he dropped into Kigali after a bloody massacre that left about 1 million dead. "And the smell is worse."
In Port-au-Prince, bodies continue to decay in the sun, waiting to be claimed or taken away — not because they may cause illness (many experts argue they won't), but because the living now sleep near the dead at night, walk among them during the day — and they must be reminded of their tragedy with each breath. It's no good to demand that an overwhelmed U.N. acknowledge the dead bodies in their midst — but there's much good in world citizens reaching out to help the living. (Head here to find out what you can do to help.)
"Only the dead person's family comes to take the body," McKenzie said, his voice slightly muffled by his red mask. "They just take it to the cemetery and drop it there."
And yet, you can still smell it in the air.
Head here to learn more about what you can do to help with earthquake-relief efforts in Haiti, and for more information, see THINK mtv.
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