An injured child sits on the sidewalk in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. The powerful earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday flattened the president's palace, the cathedral, hospitals,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Turning pickup trucks into ambulances and doors into stretchers, Haitians were frantically struggling to save those injured in this week's earthquake as desperately needed aid from around the world began arriving Thursday. 
 
 An Air China plane carrying a Chinese search-and-rescue team, medics and tons of food and medicine landed at Port-au-Prince airport before dawn, along with three French planes with aid and a mobile hospital, officials said. A British relief team arrived in neighboring Dominican Republic. 
 
 The U.S. and other nations said they were sending food, water, medical supplies to assist the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, where the international Red Cross estimated 3 million people _ a third of the population _ may need emergency relief. 
 
 In the streets of the capital, survivors set up camps amid piles of salvaged goods, including food being scavenged from the rubble. 
 
 "This is much worse than a hurricane," said Jimitre Coquillon, a doctor's assistant working at a makeshift triage center set up in a hotel parking lot. "There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die." 
 
 If there were any organized efforts to distribute food or water, they were not visible Wednesday. 
 
 The aid group Doctors Without Borders treated wounded at two hospitals that withstood the quake and set up tent clinics elsewhere to replace its damaged facilities. Cuba, which already had hundreds of doctors in Haiti, treated injured in field hospitals. 
 
 President Barack Obama promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort including the military and civilian emergency teams from across the U.S. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was expected to arrive off the coast Thursday and the Navy said the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan had been ordered to sail as soon as possible with a 2,000-member Marine unit. 
 
 "We have to be there for them in their hour of need," Obama said. 
 
 A U.S. military assessment team was the first to arrive, to determine Haiti's needs. 
 
 French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the French three planes that touched down Thursday are to evacuate around 60 injured people to hospitals in the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. He told France Inter radio two additional French relief planes are on their way. 
 
 There was no estimate on how many people were killed by Tuesday's magnitude-7 quake. Haitian President Rene Preval said the toll could be in the thousands. Leading Sen. Youri Latortue told The Associated Press the number could be 500,000, but conceded that nobody really knew. 
 
 "Let's say that it's too early to give a number," Preval said told CNN. 
 
 Survivors used sledgehammers and their bare hands to try to find victims in the rubble. In Petionville, next to the capital, people dug through a collapsed shopping center, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies. More than a dozen cars were entombed, including a U.N. truck. 
 
 Nearby, about 200 survivors, including many children, huddled in a theater parking lot using sheets to rig makeshift tents and shield themselves from the sun in 90-degree heat. 
 
 Police officers carried the injured in their pickup trucks. Wisnel Occilus, a 24-year-old student, was wedged between two other survivors in a truck bed headed to a police station. He was in an English class when the magnitude-7 quake struck at 4:53 p.m. and the building collapsed. 
 
 "The professor is dead. Some of the students are dead, too," said Occilus, who suspected he had several broken bones. "Everything hurts." 
 
 Other survivors carried injured to hospitals in wheelbarrows and on stretchers fashioned from doors. 
 
 Bodies lay everywhere in Port-au-Prince: tiny children next to schools, women in rubble-strewn streets with stunned expressions frozen on their faces, men hidden beneath plastic tarps and cotton sheets. 
 
 Balancing suitcases and belongings on their heads, people streamed on foot into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage. Ambulances and U.N. trucks raced in the opposite direction, toward Port-au-Prince. 
 
 Calls from victims seeking help from emergency services weren't getting through because systems that connect different phone networks were not working, said officials from a telecommunications provider in Haiti. 
 
 Calls were being placed sometimes 15 to 20 times from the same phone, which was "painful to watch," said Jyoti Mahurkar-Thombre, Alcatel-Lucent's general manager of wireless voice. 
 
 About 3,000 police and international peacekeepers cleared debris, directed traffic and maintained security in the capital. But law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and would be ill-equipped to deal with major unrest. The U.N.'s 9,000-member peacekeeping force sent patrols across the capital's streets while securing the airport, port and main buildings. 
 
 Looting began immediately after the quake, with people seen carrying food from collapsed buildings. Inmates were reported to have escaped from the damaged main prison in Port au Prince, said Elisabeth Byrs, a U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman in Geneva. 
 
 It was unclear whether the U.S. ground troops heading this way would be used for security operations as well as humanitarian efforts. 
 
 Port-au-Prince's ruined buildings fell on both the poor and the prominent: The body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, 63, was found in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller at Miot's order, the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France. 
 
 Haitian Senate President Kelly Bastien was rescued from the collapsed Parliament building and taken to a hospital in the neighboring Dominican Republic. The president of Haiti's Citibank was also among the survivors being treated there, said Rafael Sanchez Espanol, director of the Homs Hospital in Santiago. 
 
 A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter evacuated four critically injured U.S. Embassy staff to the hospital at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the military has been detaining suspected terrorists. 
 
 The U.S. Embassy had no confirmed reports of deaths among the estimated 40,000 to 45,000 Americans who live in Haiti, but many were struggling to find a way out of the country. 
 
 The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it has launched a Web site to help Haitians find loved ones missing in the quake. 
 
 Robert Zimmerman, deputy head of the group's tracing unit, said people in Haiti and abroad can use the site to register the names of missing relatives. 
 
 As dusk fell Wednesday, thousands of people gathered on blankets outside the crumpled presidential palace, including hundreds of women who waved their hands and sang hymns in a joyful, even defiant tone. 
 
 Ricardo Dervil, 29, said he decided to join the crowd because he was worried about aftershocks and was tired of seeing dead bodies. 
 
 "I was listening to the radio and they were saying to stay away from buildings," he said. "All I was doing was walking the street and seeing dead people." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press contributors to this story: Jonathan Katz and Jennifer Kay in Port-au-Prince; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Frank Jordans and Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva; Matthew Lee and Julie Pace in Washington; Jamey Keaton in Paris; Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo; Alicia Chang in Los Angeles, and Andrea Rodriguez in Havana. ||||| PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti  Doctors, troops and rescue teams from around the world hit the ground after the Haiti earthquake on Thursday, but complaints emerged about bottlenecks and delays in getting supplies and aid to the people who needed it. 
 
 "People have been almost fighting for water," aid worker Fevil Dubien said as he distributed water from a truck in a northern Port-au-Prince neighborhood. 
 
 From Los Angeles, Fairfax, Va., and other places, a handful of rescue teams were able to get down to work, scouring the rubble for survivors, two days after the quake left what theInternational Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimated to be 40,000 to 50,000 people dead. In one "small miracle," searchers pulled a security guard alive from beneath the collapsed concrete floors of the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters, where many others were entombed. 
 
 BEFORE AND AFTER: Satellite images from Haiti 
 
 The first group of U.S. soldiers — a little more than 100 — from the 82nd Airborne Division landed Thursday in Haiti, the White House said. The troops will find locations to set up tents and other essentials in preparation for the arrival of roughly 800 personnel from the division on Friday. They are to join about 2,200 Marines. 
 
 The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is slated to arrive Friday with 19 helicopters. 
 
 The largest airport in the tiny Caribbean nation was so jammed with relief aircraft that officials temporarily closed it to incoming flights, according to an FAA advisory citing "excessive holding and airport saturation." Later, aid flights from the United States resumed. 
 
 On the streets of this capital city, the scene was chaos. 
 
 A few blocks from the destroyed Presidential Palace, doctors from the ruined De L Hopital Universite D'etat D' Haiti performed amputations and set broken bones on the streets, tending to the injured with no water or electricity, and few medications, except for over-the-counter pain killers. 
 
 Hundreds gathered around the hospital compound. There was no register of patients. 
 
 "All of the patients come here," said Guy LaRoche, hospital manager. 
 
 At least 2,000 bodies lay in the street, LaRoche said. Most of them were in a makeshift outdoor graveyard, where bodies were stacked on top of one other. An additional 1,000 bodies lay stacked inside the hospital's morgue. Some of the bodies had been brought there by relatives, and others had died at the hospital. 
 
 Violaine Bernardin went to the hospital hoping she could find and identify her four children, who had died in the quake. But she was so overwhelmed by the macabre site of so many bodies, many swollen and disfigured, that she turned away. 
 
 "I know they are gone," said Bernardin, 39, whose children ages 16 to 20 were in a house that collapsed. 
 
 For now, Bernardin wanders the streets because she has no home or money. 
 
 "I don't need anything," she said. "I lost my children ... The government will do nothing. In Haiti, they never do anything." 
 
 Juilie Exile came to the hospital carrying a 7-month-old baby named Billy who was covered in dust. The baby barely moved or opened his red swollen eyes. 
 
 Exile said she and other members of her family were searching the rubble for relatives when they found the boy, whose father died in the quake. Neighbors dug the baby out, she said, adding there is no official help in the neighborhoods. 
 
 "It's only neighbors helping neighbors," she said. 
 
 A representative for one relief organization expressed frustration that supplies and help seem to be taking some time getting to the people who need them. 
 
 On Thursday evening, a flight from Denver carrying supplies was delayed because of congestion at the airport. The flight was carrying 18 metric tons of supplies from World Vision that included tarps, blankets, hygiene kits, cooking equipment and water containers. 
 
 "We know we need tents, water and food," Dave Roycen, president and CEO of World Vision Canada, said. 
 
 At the White House, President Obama said the U.S. government is making an initial investment of $100 million for the earthquake relief effort in Haiti. He said the amount would grow over the year. 
 
 He also said it will take hours, "maybe days," to get the full U.S. relief contingent on the ground because of the damaged roads, airport, port and communications. Obama acknowledged that "none of this will seem quick enough" to the many suffering. 
 
 To the Haitians, Obama promised: "You will not be forsaken." He told them that the USA — and the world — "stands with you." 
 
 Aid worker Bernice Robertson had one word for what Haiti needs now — "everything." 
 
 IN THE U.S.: Haitian Americans await word 
 
 Rescue teams struggled Thursday to save the trapped and injured, using pickups as ambulances and doors as stretchers. 
 
 Thirty-six U.N. personnel were confirmed dead and nearly 200 remained missing, the head of the world body said. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said the U.N.'s mission chief, Hedi Annabi, and his chief deputy, Luis Carlos da Costa, are among roughly 100 people still buried in the rubble of the five-story building. 
 
 The United Nations chief said early Thursday morning that rescue teams at the collapsed headquarters building heard "scratching sounds" and located Tarmo Joveer, an Estonian close protection officer, under about 13 feet of rubble. He was given water through a rubber pipe, pulled out and taken to the U.N. mission hospital run by Argentine staff. 
 
 As the scope of the devastation became clearer, survivors spoke in terms of all that has disappeared. Most hospitals, houses, schools, roads and grocery stores — virtually every necessity of basic life — were transformed into piles of rubble. 
 
 Robertson, an aid worker for the International Crisis Group just outside the ravaged Haitian capital, said people in her neighborhood were digging through wreckage with their bare hands to try to find survivors. 
 
 Aid organizations were beginning what they said may be one of the biggest, most complex relief efforts in recent history. The absence of clean water, electricity and medical supplies could result in more deaths in the days ahead unless dramatic action is taken, they said. 
 
 "We've never seen anything like this before," said Curt Welling, president and CEO of AmeriCares, an aid organization. "Pretty much all the vital infrastructure in Port-au-Prince seems to have been destroyed. This could all take years to repair." 
 
 Earlier Thursday, planes carrying teams from China, France and Spain landed at Port-au-Prince's airport with searchers and tons of food, medicine and other supplies — with more promised from around the globe. It took six hours to unload a Chinese plane because the airport lacked the needed equipment. 
 
 Government convoys carrying water, medical supplies and equipment for moving large debris had reached the Dominican Republic-Haitian border early Thursday. 
 
 "It's incredible," Haitian President Rene Preval told CNN. "A lot of people in the street dead. ... I'm still looking to understand the magnitude of the event and how to manage" it. 
 
 The earthquake Tuesday evening hit an impoverished, often dysfunctional country that has dealt with more than its fair share of tragedy. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing on television network news shows Thursday after cutting short an overseas trip, said it is still too early to make a firm estimate of the number of deaths. Of the damage in Haiti, Clinton said "the depth and scope is unimaginable." 
 
 Since just 2004, Haiti has faced floods, food riots, mudslides, at least five hurricanes and a rebellion that left it briefly without a functioning government, forcing United Nations peacekeeper to take charge. The succession of calamities — made worse by decades of dictatorship and political mismanagement — has led to a country where most people survive on $2 or less a day. Even before the earthquake, Haiti relied on foreign aid for most of its food. 
 
 "It's almost as if the country is cursed," said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 
 
 'They can't do anything' 
 
 The vacant lot next to the Red Cross Office in Port-au-Prince became a makeshift camp and triage area. 
 
 Matthew Marek and his staff began to triage the people, gathering all the medical supplies from their destroyed office and their vehicles. Sometime after midnight, the gauze, bandages and alcohol swabs ran out. 
 
 "There were lots of broken bones and things we couldn't treat," Marek said. 
 
 The destruction: "It's immense. Neighborhood after neighborhood." 
 
 Marek and his staff drove some victims to hospitals and clinics but found such facilities to be overwhelmed. "They can't do anything," he said. 
 
 Amy Wilentz, a journalism professor and author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier, said the government has allowed millions of Haitians to build precarious homes on mountains and ravines recently, which also would result in a higher death toll. 
 
 "The pictures you're looking at show a terrible wreck, but before the earthquake things were already pretty much a disaster," she said. 
 
 The first U.S. ship on the scene, the Coast Guard cutter Forward, was confronted with a "catastrophic" scene, said Cmdr. Diane Durham. "Churches, mansions or corrugated shanties, it doesn't matter. Everybody in this city seems to have been hit." 
 
 In the harbor, piers and shipping containers have collapsed into water slickened by an oil spill. Half of the 80 members stationed at the Haitian Coast Guard base are dead, Durham said. 
 
 The cutter's helicopter ferried four critically injured people from the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince to a medical facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 
 
 Hurdles to recovery 
 
 Recovery will be hampered by Haiti's poor roads, which makes reaching people in remote areas extremely difficult, said Anna Versluis, a geography professor at Gustavus Adolphus College who studies Haiti. 
 
 "Haiti's poverty is a factor. If the goal is to restore what was there before, we're not doing very well because most people didn't have much to begin with," she said. 
 
 Welling, the AmeriCares CEO, said Haitians "are a very resilient people" and would get by with sufficient international help. 
 
 "You may eventually look back at this and say, 'Haiti is better than it was,' " he said. "But I think in the next few days, we're going to hear an awful lot of horror stories." 
 
 Torres reporting for Florida Today and Rachel Revehl reporting for Florida's News-Press are in Haiti. Brian Winter reported from McLean, Va., Donna Leinwand from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Contributing: Aamer Madhani, Oren Dorell, Fredreka Schouten, Cathy Grossman, Kathleen Gray of the Detroit Free Press, Carolyn Pesce, Melanie Eversley and the Associated Press.
– A Haitian Red Cross official estimated today that 45,000 to 50,000 people perished in the shattering earthquake Tuesday, as President Obama pledged US support of $100 million for what he said is likely to be one of the biggest relief efforts in history. Desperately needed aid began arriving from around the world this morning, the Washington Post reports. An Air China plane carrying a Chinese search-and-rescue team, medics, and tons of food and medicine landed at Port-au-Prince airport before dawn, along with three French planes with aid and a mobile hospital, officials said. A British relief team arrived in neighboring Dominican Republic, the AP reports. Bodies lay everywhere in Port-au-Prince, as survivors, many severely injured, set up camps, salvaging mattresses, plastic chairs, bits of cardboard and food from the rubble. Others streamed on foot into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage, passing ambulances and UN trucks racing in the opposite direction. "This is much worse than a hurricane," said a doctor's assistant working at a makeshift triage center set up in a hotel parking lot. "There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die."