Port-au-Prince prays on quake anniversary

The normally traffic-clogged streets of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince were quiet yesterday as businesses closed and people attended services to mark the anniversary of the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.

Many people wore white, a colour associated with mourning in Haiti, and sang hymns as they navigated rubble still left in the streets after the earthquake on 12 January, 2010, that killed more than 230,000 people.

Evens Lormil, 35, joined mourners at the Catholic cathedral, its towering spires and vaulted roof now collapsed, for a memorial Mass. The service was held in a tent next to the ruined cathedral.

He said: "Even though life was bad before the earthquake, it got worse. I am hoping the country can move together and come forward."

Terez Benitot, 56, said she lost a cousin in the earthquake, her house collapsed and her husband, a mason, has less work than before the quake.

"God blessed me by taking only one of my cousins that day," she said. "Our house collapsed but we have health and life."

Criss-crossing the central Champ de Mars Plaza were groups thanking God for sparing them from the earthquake, and others using the day to promote women's rights, oppose the UN force that provides security in Haiti, and other causes.

"It is a grand day for us that we are able to give thanks to God that we are still here," Acsonne Frederique, 54, said as a preacher exhorted him and others in the cheering crowd to pray. "Others are here to repair our country. We are here to repair our souls."

President Rene Preval and former US president Bill Clinton attended a ceremony to lay the cornerstone for a new national tax office, where many workers were killed in one of the blows to the public sector that paralysed the government following the earthquake.