Kiwi aid worker urges Govt to send soldiers to Haiti

A Bay of Plenty aid worker who spent seven days knee-deep in bodies as part of the recovery operation in earthquake-hit Haiti is urging the New Zealand Government to send troops to the disaster zone.

Tauranga-born Rymann Winter, 37, spent the past week in Haiti sorting through thousands of bodies in a recovery operation, after the devastating earthquake hit almost three weeks ago.

He said the conditions there were nothing like he had ever seen before and is urging the Government to send troops.

"The majority of people are sleeping on the streets. They either have no homes or are too scared to go inside in fear of aftershocks bringing it down," Mr Winter said.

"There are plenty of doctors and aid workers here but we need a whole lot of engineers to check the houses so people can feel safe to go inside.

"There are thousands of buildings that need to be demolished so the country can start again, from scratch.

"What we need here is a bunch of New Zealand Army boys."

Mr Winter said people in Haiti were struggling to survive, as food and water became scarce.

"There are a few isolated markets where some food is available but the prices have skyrocketed and people just can't afford it.

"People could barely survive before the earthquake, and this has had a devastating effect."

Mr Winter is the president of Aviation For Humanity, an organisation he founded in 2006 to provide aid to developing countries where access on roads was not possible or secure.

He said the organisation was already giving aid to rural areas in Haiti before the earthquake hit on January 12.

Mr Winter could not contact his crew, so flew to Haiti and spent 20 hours on the back of a truck, to reach the city in ruins.

"The devastation was absolutely incredible," he said. "It was nothing like I have ever seen before. There are entire sections of the city that are in ruins.

"There is no electricity, the infrastructure has absolutely shut down and they lost so many senior politicians in one hit.

"It is going to take years and years to get back to some kind of normality."

Immediately after the earthquake, first response crews from just about every country came to the aid of Haiti, Mr Winter said. But many had pulled out now because the window for finding survivors was closing.

One of the biggest challenges now was child trafficking. "The number of orphaned children before the earthquake was huge and now there is even more."