Haiti town struggles to emerge from the rubble

HAITI: Residents of the seaside Haitian town of Leogane, which was largely destroyed by the January 2010 earthquake, would love to rebuild, but first they have to get past the mounds of rubble.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that engineering assessments conducted by the government and the United Nations show only about 50 percent of Leogane's buildings collapsed, unlike the 80-90 percent some feared.

The bad news: three-story houses are waist-high, flattened into the ground. Thirteen months after the quake, concrete and cinder blocks still lurk around every corner.

Removing the rubble in Leogane has been easier than in the congested, teeming capital Port-au-Prince, but even here, it's taking much, much longer than anyone expected. Alexis Santos, the larger-than-life local mayor, told AFP that reconstruction money is finally starting to arrive.

Leogane, AFP