HAITI / EXODUS

Mass graves are being dug up to bury the tens of thousands of dead as many people try to leave the city over cracked and debri covered roads. MINUSTAH

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:01:53
• Production Date: 15 January 2010
• Asset Language: Original
• Subject Topical: HUMANITARIAN RELIEF; REFUGEES; DISPLACED PERSONS; DISASTER PREVENTION; DISASTER PREPAREDNESS; DISASTER RELIEF; HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE
• Geographic Subject: HAITI; UNITED NATIONS STABILIZATION MISSION IN HAITI - MINUSTAH
• MAMS Id: U100115c

Description

STORY: HAITI / EXODUS
TRT: 1.53
SOURCE: MINUSTAH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: CREOLE/ NATS

DATELINE: 15 JANUARY 2010, PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI

Shotlist

1. Wide shot, bodies in a heap by the road leading out of Port-au-Prince
2. Med shot, body of a child in the dirt
3. Close up, arm of a quake victim
4. Pan left, mass grave dug in the area of Titanyen, outside of the capital
5. Wide shot, covered grave holding hundreds of quake victims.
6. Zoom out, pile of bodies near the road
7. Med shot, hand of a dead victim reaching out, in front of road
8. Med shot, press conference
9. SOUNDBITE (Creole) Dr. Alex Larsen, Minister of Public Health:
"The urgent intervention here is to manage the bodies. We have to get them out, and sanitize the area, disinfect it. And we have to prevent epidemics."
10. Med shot, President René Garcia Préval talking on a mobile transmitter
11. Med shot, press conference
12. SOUNDBITE (Creole) Dieufort de Lorge, Minister of Civil Protection:
"There are more than 50,000 dead. We believe there are between 750,000 and a million homeless, and about 250,000 wounded."
13. Wide shot, bus piled high with people and belongings flees the city for the countryside
14. Med shot, major crack in the highway, with a bus passing over
15. Wide shot, packed bus traveling over hot road
16. Med shot, people on the bus fleeing the capital

Storyline

Seventy-two hours after a massive earthquake struck Haiti’s capital Port-au-Price and neighbouring areas, mass graves are being dug up in the outskirts of the city to bury the dead, which could reach up to a hundred thousand.

The Minister of Public Health said that managing the bodies is one of the top health priorities, to prevent epidemics, and due to the enormous scale of the task bodies are being piled into heaps and buried together in nameless graves.

SOUNDBITE (Creole) Dr. Alex Larsen, Minister of Public Health:
"The urgent intervention here is to manage the bodies. We have to get them out, and sanitize the area, disinfect it. And we have to prevent epidemics."

Haiti’s Minister of Civil Protection said the government expects more than 50,000 dead, closer to 100,000. He says 750,000 may be homeless, and 250,000 wounded. The government said yesterday they had already buried more than 7,000 people.

SOUNDBITE (Creole) Dieufort de Lorge, Minister of Civil Protection:
"There are more than 50,000 dead. We believe there are between 750,000 and a million homeless, and about 250,000 wounded."

Meanwhile, scores of people started leaving the city in packed vehicles in a massive exodus away from the destruction of Port-au-Prince, sometimes traversing over often cracked and barely passable roads.