Re: Haiti Earthquake Hotel Montana is on Facebook
US commits to recover all bodies from Haiti hotel
By: MIKE MELIA AND MICHELLE FAUL
The Associated Press
Friday February 5, 2010 06:10 AM
In this Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010 photo, French firefighters arrive to the site where a body recovery operation is underway at the rubble of the Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince. Before the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, the hotel attracted an international mix of tourists, aid workers and diplomats with its sweeping views from the hills above Port-au-Prince. Crews from Haiti, Brazil, France, the United States, Mexico and Canada have all combed the debris, which pancaked so dramatically that the roofline comes within inches of the ground. (AP Photo)
Names and photos of people still missing after Haiti's earthquake are seen in an improvised memorial in the rubble of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010. Before the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, the hotel attracted an international mix of tourists, aid workers and diplomats with its sweeping views from the hills above Port-au-Prince. Crews from Haiti, Brazil, France, the United States, Mexico and Canada have all combed the debris, which pancaked so dramatically that the roofline comes within inches of the ground. (AP Photo)
In this Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010 photo, Dominique Lajoie, right, Director or Operations of the Hotel Montana, and bellboy Lionel Jean-Francois search for documents in the rubble of the hotel in Port-au-Prince. Before the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, the hotel attracted an international mix of tourists, aid workers and diplomats with its sweeping views from the hills above Port-au-Prince. Crews from Haiti, Brazil, France, the United States, Mexico and Canada have all combed the debris, which pancaked so dramatically that the roofline comes within inches of the ground. (AP Photo)
This Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010 photo shows a poster of missing Antiguan Gregory McCalpin at the improvised memorial at the Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince. Before the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, the hotel attracted an international mix of tourists, aid workers and diplomats with its sweeping views from the hills above Port-au-Prince. Crews from Haiti, Brazil, France, the United States, Mexico and Canada have all combed the debris, which pancaked so dramatically that the roofline comes within inches of the ground. (AP Photo)
This photo released by Lynn Univesity in Boca Raton, Fla., shows Britney Gengel who is among the four students and two Lynn University faculty members missing in Haiti, after a massive earthquake destroyed much of the capitol city of Port-Au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010. (AP Photo/Lynn University) NO SALES.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010 file photo, Len Gengel and his wife Cherylann talk about their daughter Britney, who is missing after the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, in Deerfield Beach, Fla. As recovery crews scour the collapsed Hotel Montana, where Britney is believed to be lost in the rubble, Len and Cherylann Gengel are waiting with dread for a call to confirm her fate. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter, file)
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An hour before the earthquake struck, 19-year-old Britney Gengel phoned her mother in Massachusetts, bursting with joy: She had found her calling on a college trip to help orphans in Haiti.
Now, as recovery crews continue to scour the collapsed Hotel Montana where Britney and 14 other Americans are believed buried in the rubble, Len and Cherylann Gengel are waiting with dread for another call _ this time confirming their daughter's fate.
"It is a living hell on Earth to be in this limbo," Len Gengel said.
Gengel's daughter and three other students from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., are believed to have been trapped inside the Montana when the Jan. 12 quake struck, turning the six-story landmark into a tangle of broken concrete in the flash of an eye. Some 100 people are believed buried there.
The U.S. is pursuing the cases of about 4,000 Americans unaccounted for in Haiti, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay. He said that number could drop dramatically because many are Haitians with U.S. citizenship who travel frequently between the two countries and are more difficult to track. So far, the U.S. has confirmed 79 American deaths.
"The departments of state, defense and health and human services are working together to recover, identify and repatriate remains of American citizens in the absence of functioning local mortuaries and commercial flights out of Haiti," said David Searby, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy.
The Hotel Montana attracted an international clientele of tourists, aid workers and diplomats with its sweeping views from the hills above Port-au-Prince. None of the capital's ruins has been more thoroughly searched. Crews from the U.S., Brazil, France, Mexico, Canada and Haiti have all combed the debris, which pancaked so dramatically that the roofline comes within inches of the ground.
U.S. Army Col. Norberto Cintron, who is in charge of the recovery effort, said it will continue until workers find and identify the remains of all who were lost there. He expects it to take six to eight weeks.
"My instructions are to try to find everyone that was in this building," Cintron said. "We want to make sure we do this in a humane, dignified way, especially for the families."
It's a slow process: spray the mass of broken concrete and twisted metal beams to clear the dust that covers everything, including bodies. If there are none, signal a frontloader to lift the debris. If there is the smell of death, work carefully with jackhammers and other tools to search for and extricate the body.
A team from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is there to identify remains pulled from the hotel, and American soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division provide security. Inside the hotel gates, Cintron said 60 to 80 workers from outfits including the Army Corps of Engineers are working on recovering bodies.
At the Hotel Montana, about 21 people were pulled out alive and, so far, 28 bodies have been recovered, according to Cintron. It is the site where perhaps the largest number of Americans has yet to be recovered.
The engraved wedding ring on the finger of one smashed body pulled out last week helped workers identify her as Sandra Liliana Rivero Gonzalez, a Colombian manager for Delta Airlines. Two other bodies removed on Sunday, a man and a woman, were crushed beyond recognition and put into body bags to be taken away for identification from dental and other medical records.
Read more at:
http://www.timesonline.com/bct_news...s-to-recover-all-bodies-from-haiti-hotel.html
