Everything was over within a minute

Johnson said 61 people in the UN Mission in Haiti died in the earthquake. When the tragedy stuck,I was standing near a car parked outside a six-storied building. Everything was over within a minute. The building was reduced to a heap of rubbles. The mission lost its chief,who was then having a discussion with a Chinese delegation,which also perished.

He said the tragedy has reduced the nation to heap of rubbles when it had been making an all-out attempt for progress with the support of the UN for the last 10 years. The quake has pushed back Haiti by at least 50 years. I am going back because of my job in the UN mission. As an official of the UN,I cannot run away from the rescue works, he said.

Johnson said rescue workers have not even attended to private buildings,where thousands of dead bodies are still trapped. No one has cleared the debris in private buildings to remove the decomposed bodies. The threat of epidemic is staring at the relief workers, he said.

The survivors are rummaging through the debris for their relatives. My friend had to dig grave for his four children. He is still searching for the dead bodies of his other two children. Earth movers are used to load bodies on trucks. Heaps of bodies have been burnt using patrol. The real count of the dead would be much above the official figure of 2.5 lakh, he said.

Johnson said all buildings in Port-au-Prince have been destroyed. The homeless sleep on roads and parks. Several buildings are waiting to collapse in a single spell of rain. One can see thousands scramble to use the one or two toilets erected at relief camps.

Referring to the smuggling of children out of Haiti,Johnson said that practice had been stopped after several agencies raised grave concern. I believe those children taken out of Haiti have escaped from a life of ordeal, he said.