Haiti Aid Piles Up at Bottlenecks as Unrest Grows

Massive amounts of aid are arriving in Haiti only to hit bottlenecks at the Port-au-Prince airport, the port or warehouses, where medicine, bandages, and other desperately needed supplies are piling up. Clogged roads, a crippled government, and outbreaks of violence mean that the aid flowing into Haiti is reaching earthquake victims too slowly to outpace growing unrest in the disaster-stricken nation, the AP reports.

Aid convoys require armed escorts—and some three hours just to drive across Port-au-Prince, a journey that is only possible during daylight, since people sleep in the streets at night. "We have to wait for things even though they're stacked up in the warehouse," a doctor said. "The situation is just madness." Part of the problem, a World Food Program official notes, is such massive need "in a densely populated urban context, which is not a traditional operating area for a humanitarian mission." (More Haiti stories.)