The US military's takeover of emergency operations in Haiti has triggered a diplomatic row with countries and aid agencies furious at having flights redirected. 
 
 Brazil and France lodged an official ­protest with Washington after US military aircraft were given priority at Port-au-Prince's congested airport, forcing many non-US flights to divert to the Dominican Republic. 
 
 Brasilia warned it would not ­relinquish command of UN forces in Haiti, and Paris complained the airport had become a US "annexe", exposing a brewing power struggle amid the global relief effort. The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières also complained about diverted flights. 
 
 The row prompted Haiti's president, René Préval, to call for calm. "This is an extremely difficult situation," he told AP. "We must keep our cool to co-ordinate and not throw accusations at each other." 
 
 The squabbling came amid signs that aid was reaching some of the hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need of water, food and medicine six days after a magnitude 7 earthquake levelled the capital, killing more than 100,000, according to Haitian authorities. 
 
 The UN was feeding 40,000 and hoped to increase that to 1 million within a fortnight, said the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, as he arrived in Port-au-Prince yesterday. "I am here with a message of hope that help is on the way," he said, speaking outside the severely damaged national palace. He also acknowledged "that many people are frustrated and they are losing their patience." 
 
 Ban said he has three priorities in Haiti: saving as many lives as possible, stepping up humanitarian assistance and ensuring the co-ordination of aid coming into the country. "We should not waste even a single item, a dollar," he said. 
 
 The plight of 80 elderly people at a partially collapsed municipal hospice just a mile from the airport, now a huge aid hub, showed the desperate need. The body of a dead 70-year-old man rotted on a mattress, nearly indistinguishable from the exhausted, hungry and thirsty people around him. "Others won't live until tonight," an administrator, Jean Emmanuel, told the Associated Press. 
 
 The Haitian government has established 14 food distribution points and aid groups have opened five emergency health centres. Water-purification units – a priority to avert disease and dehydration – were arriving. 
 
 But with aftershocks jolting the ruins, bloated bodies in the street and severe shortages of water and food many survivors had had enough: an exodus trekked on foot out of the city to rural areas. 
 
 The security situation worsened, with some looters fighting with rocks and clubs for rice, clothing and other goods scavenged from debris. In places the embryonic aid machine did not even try to organise distribution. Aid workers tossed out food packets to crowds and US helicopters took off as soon as they offloaded supplies, prompting scrambles in which the fittest and strongest prevailed. 
 
 "They are not identifying the people who need the water. The sick and the old have no chance," Estime Pierre Deny, ­hoping to fill a plastic container with water amid a scrum of people, told Reuters. 
 
 Frustration over aid bottlenecks among donors became tinged by national rivalry as it became clear the US was taking ownership of the crisis. A vanguard of more than 1,000 US troops was on the ground and 12,000 were expected in the region by today, including marines aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson which anchored offshore as a "floating airport". 
 
 The Haitian government, paralysed by the destruction of the presidential palace and ministries, signed a memorandum of understanding formally transferring control of Toussaint L'Ouverture airport to the US. Former president Bill Clinton said he will travel to Haiti today to meet with government officials and deliver much-needed emergency supplies. 
 
 The UN mission, which had a 9,000-strong peacekeeping force in Haiti before the quake, seemed too stunned by its own losses to take control. Its dead include its Tunisian head, Hédi Annabi, his Brazilian deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa, and the acting police commissioner, Doug Coates, a Canadian. 
 
 Flights seeking permission to land continuously circle the airport, which is damaged and has only a single runway, rankling several governments and aid agencies. "There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti," Jarry Emmanuel, air logistics officer for the UN's World Food Programme, told the New York Times. "But most flights are for the US military. Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync." 
 
 France, which as the former ­colonial power expects a prominent role, ­protested when an emergency field hospital was turned back. The foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said the airport was not for the international community but "an annexe of Washington", according to France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret. 
 
 Brazil, which saw its leadership of the UN peacekeeping mission as a calling card of its burgeoning influence, was also indignant when three flights were not allowed to land. The foreign ministry reportedly asked Hillary Clinton to grant Brazil priority over chartered flights. Nelson Jobim, the defence minister, said Brazil would not relinquish command duties and suggested it, not Washington, would continue to lead UN forces. Analysts said it was vital command issues be resolved. 
 
 The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières complained about flights with medical staff and equipment which were redirected to the Dominican Republic. "We are all going crazy," said Nan Buzard, of the American Red Cross. 
 
 The Obama administration has enlisted former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to spearhead relief efforts. In a series of interviews both men deflected right-wing accusations that the White House was seeking political advantage from the disaster. "I'd say now is not the time to focus on politics," Bush said, as he sat beside his predecessor. "You've got children who've lost parents. People wondering where they're going to be able to drink water." ||||| Getty Images People line up to get gasoline on Thursday after the massive earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 
 
 A demolished seaport, a congested one-runway airport, a shattered communications system, and even questions about how to coordinate the multi-national relief effort delayed the delivery of aid to an increasingly desperate Haiti and highlighted the immense obstacles that lie ahead. 
 
 The Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince is overwhelmed. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has put a ground stop into place for all U.S.-originating civilian aircraft until 6 p.m. EST. Military flights carrying water purifying equipment, medicine and generators have been given priority to land. 
 
 Parking space on the airport ramp is limited, and many military and humanitarian aircraft are already on the ground there. About a dozen planes are sitting on the tarmac, with another 20 on the grass. The airport has also run out of aircraft fuel, so inbound planes have to carry enough fuel to be able to leave without refueling. 
 
 According to the FAA, the humanitarian response is so overwhelming that air-traffic controllers in Haiti can't handle the volume of flights arriving in Port-au-Prince. The airspace "is saturated," said Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman for the agency's southern region in College Park, Ga. Aircraft are holding in the air and en route to Haiti, she said, because the capital's airport isn't accepting any additional flights at the time. 
 
 U.S. aircraft and ships are on the way to Haiti, but it will be a challenge to deliver food and medicine to the people that need it. Video courtesy of Fox News. 
 
 The control tower is inoperative; the U.S. military is providing air traffic control. With thousands of victims camped out at the Port-Au-Prince airport and little or no electricity at the site, officials are constrained in their ability to handle the flow of planes. Night operations will pose particular problems. 
 
 Already, there are at least 4,000 metric tons of aid supplies at the airport. "The big issue is how you get it out," says Tanya Weinberg of aid group Save the Children. "Planes haven't been unloaded." 
 
 Save the Children sent two teams that departed from the Dominican Republic, but only one was able to get in. The plane was also smaller than what the group had hoped to use, so supplies such as fresh water and food were left behind because they exceeded the weight limit. 
 
 The road from the airport to the city is now passable, said Hussein Halane, also of Save the Children. Several embassies pitched in to clear the debris. "We're at the very, very beginning of a long relief effort," said Mr. Halane. 
 
 Helping Haiti 
 
 View Slideshow Associated Press A man held a child in a makeshift camp for earthquake survivors in the 31 Delmar neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Thursday. 
 
 In addition to parked planes and supplies, stranded Americans and other foreigners waited on the steaming tarmac, hoping for a ride out. 
 
 U.S. Air Force teams are scouting for alternate landing spots and makeshift strips that could accommodate choppers or cargo planes, even as they work to facilitate departures and arrivals at the main airport. 
 
 Making matters worse is the that supplies cannot come in by sea. Haiti's main seaport has "collapsed and is not operational," says Maersk Line's Mary Ann Kotlarich. The main dock is partially submerged. Cranes that moved containers on and off ships at the port are now partially under water and listing badly. Ships carrying supplies have nowhere to dock. 
 
 Two days after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, destruction is widespread and survivors wait in desperation as international aid teams begin arriving. WSJ's Charles Forelle reports from Port-au-Prince. 
 
 Numerous maritime companies are trying to devise stop-gap solutions, but nothing is in place yet. 
 
 "Nothing has been proposed that would really be a solution at this point," says Mark Miller of Crowley Maritime Corp., a Jacksonville, Fla., shipping company that maintains an extensive logistics network in the Caribbean. 
 
 Maersk Line operates a small ship that unloads containers from larger vessels and then brings them to the port. That vessel is currently anchored off the coast of Port-au-Prince, as the company tries to determine how it can be put to use. 
 
 Shipping companies are now examining other areas in the vicinity to see if they can find a place that could serve as a makeshift unloading area for ships. 
 
 "What we are doing and what others are doing with various agencies is to see if there is a suitable, workable location anywhere around the harbor where we could get a vessel," said Mr. Miller. 
 
 However, any new location must first undergo a survey to determine whether the earthquake tremors have changed water depths or dumped debris that could cause vessels to run aground. 
 
 Even if they are able to create a new area where ships can dock, it would likely be heavily constrained and unable to handle high volumes, say people in the industry. One of the biggest problems is the lack of any stationery crane to unload shipping containers. 
 
 For now, the U.S. Navy has helicopters able to bring material ashore, and U.S. Air Force special operations troops already in Haiti have equipment to transfer some cargo from ships to land. 
 
 Overall coordination of the vast, multi-national relief effort has not yet been fully clarified. The United Nations has 3,000 troops in and around Port-au-Prince who are providing security, distributing aid and removing corpses. The U.S. military is sending 3,500 troops to help with a variety of relief and policing tasks. Asked Thursday morning if the American troops would be under United Nations control, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made it clear that the command structure had not yet been worked out. 
 
 "The Force Commander of the UN peacekeeping operations will coordinate, I hope, with the US military assistance team," said Mr. Ban. "I know that the South Command has been designated to provide assistance. I am sure that the military leaders will fully coordinate with each other." 
 
 U.S. State Department officials said the U.S. troops that are deploying to Haiti will work closely with the United Nations security force there but remain solely under American command. 
 
 PM Report: Desperation in Haiti 9:41 WSJ's Charles Forelle reports from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where survivors of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake are growing desperate for international aid. Plus, as masses of the newly homeless cluster in public spaces without clean water or sanitation, doctors and aid workers worry that a wave of infectious disease may soon spread through Haiti. The News Hub brings you the latest. 
 
 President Barack Obama has put the U.S. Agency for International Development in charge of coordinating the overall relief effort, so its director, Rajiv Shah, will be the highest-ranking American official working on Haiti. Lt. Gen. P. K. Keen, the deputy director of the military's Southern Command, will take his orders from Kenneth Merten, the American ambassador to Haiti. 
 
 David Wimhurst, the U.N.'s director of communications in Haiti, told journalists in New York via video link that aid flights were arriving regualrly to the airport. He also said the U.N. had sufficient forces to distribute the aid that has arrived. "So far we feel confident that we have enough [U.N.] military," he said. "If necessary we will bring more peacekeepers from outside the city." Mr. Wilmhurst added in the streets of Port-au-Prince, "The Haitian police has disappeared. They are not visible." 
 
 Mr. Wilmhurst was on the third floor of the Christopher Hotel, the U.N. headquarters in Port-au-Prince, when violent shaking made him cling to desk. Part of the hotel collapsed, blocking the exit. So he and 15 other staff escaped out his window and down a rickety ladder. 
 
 Another problem: The broken communications system. Louis Belanger, a spokesman for humanitarian aid group Oxfam International, said the relief efforts were being hindered it was often impossible for people to communicate electronically. "There have been a lot of criticism from local authorities about the relief efforts, but in all fairness, if we could catch a break and get some communication up and running, things would go a lot faster," Mr. Belanger said, speaking by phone from the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. "It's extremely difficult without landlines, Internet connectivity or cellphones." 
 
 It is getting easier to communicate. On Thursday, satellite-services provider Intelsat established two communications networks –combining satellite and terrestrial links – which helped humanitarian groups, media companies and local telecommunication operators regain Internet access. 
 
 Members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department's search and rescue team flew to Port-au-Prince this morning with a 72 member squad, a spokesman said. Missionary Flights International, an aviation service out of Fort Prince, Fl. continued daily flights to Port-au-Prince. 
 
 But other relief organizations said Thursday they were unable to make it to Haiti despite supplies and volunteers. "We've had a lot of roadblocks in working with the administration and getting through to the military," said Charles Idleson of National Nurses United, a union representing around 150,000 nurses. Mr. Idleson said roughly 3,500 of its members volunteered to travel to Haiti, but the union has so far been unable to get a response from the U.S. government for transportation to Port-au-Prince. Instead, a small delegation of nurses plans to fly into Santo Domingo on Friday aboard a commercial jet. 
 
 Irenea Renuncio-Mateo, Latin America political analyst for IHS Global Insight, said coordinating the massive relief effort would take time. "The response needs to be coordinated and planned," she said. "Obviously this takes time. They can't just send people. They need to know how they're going to re-establish minimal infrastructure, water, and electricity." 
 
 Haiti Quake Survivors Speak 1:11 WSJ's Charles Forelle speaks with survivors of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti. 
 
 At the airport, David Hornish was hoping for a flight out. He had come before the temblor stuck with a humanitarian group to dig water wells. Mr. Hornish was driving in Port-au-Price when the ground shook so violently that "the truck went backwards by itself," he said. He made it back to the compound where he had been staying. "It was five stories," Mr. Hornish said. "Gone." 
 
 He and his colleague, Bruce Oberlin from Akron, Ohio, spent five hours digging one person out of the rubble. Three others died. They buried one in the back yard. "Our choice was to lay him out in the street," Mr. Oberlin said. 
 
 Port-au-Prince is a shambles, and at midday Thursday rescuers were still a rare sight in some parts of the city. Men and women idled in front of crumbled buildings, sometimes climbing atop in a likely futile search for survivors. An electronics store along a major shopping street is crumpled. An elementary school is a ragged mess of concrete. A strip mall is leveled. A corpse, wrapped in a white sheet and swarming with flies, lay in an intersection. 
 
 —Nicholas Casey, Chris Herring, Steve Stecklow and the Associated Press contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com, Susan Carey at susan.carey@wsj.com, Gabriel Kahn at gabriel.kahn@wsj.com, Joe Lauria at newseditor@wsj.com and John Lyons at john.lyons@wsj.com
– The global relief effort in Haiti has devolved into a nasty power struggle, with countries and aid agencies furious at the US takeover of emergency operations. France, Brazil, which runs the UN peacekeeping operation in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Cross all lodged complaints after their aid shipments were diverted to the neighboring Dominican Republic so that US military flights could land at Port-au-Prince's congested airport, where just one runway is operable. "We are all going crazy," a Red Cross official told the Guardian, as a UN World Food Program officer complained in the New York Times that US military has muscled out other relief efforts. "Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync." The Haitian president begged the squabbling powers to stay calm: "We must keep our cool to coordinate and not throw accusations at each other."