A rescue team from Rapid UK used hammers and chisels as they spent six hours digging a 39-year-old woman out from under the ruins of her collapsed home.
Dan Cooke, a Wiltshire firefighter, said: “There was a woman under three or four floors of concrete squashed in with dead members of her family. That was a hammer and chisel job and it took six hours before the doctor assigned to our team took her to hospital.”
Meanwhile rescuers from Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) said today that they had reached a man after seven hours of tunnelling. He had been thrown out of his bed by the earthquake and ended up underneath it, which protected him and helped him to survive. After being rehydrated he recovered well and was treated for minor injuries.
Mr Cooke said his team rescued two people yesterday and two the day before. “It is more than we would usually come across," he said. "The people are very tough as a nation and the weather conditions help to keep people alive but as the days go on the chances of people surviving fall massively.”
The 64-strong search and rescue contingent from Britain is among 47 teams working across the capital in dangerous conditions. There have been many scenes of lawlessness as looters ransack shops and stores. In at least one case, angry Haitians have taken the law into their own hands and lynched a suspected looter, dragging his body through the streets with a rope lashed around his feet.
Mr Cooke said: “You hear gunfire, you see gangs of youths carrying machetes but to some extent that is part of the culture here.
“We are doing quite well. The UN security forces are attaching themselves to us and some teams have brought their own armed security.
“The conditions yesterday were very hot and dusty. There is always a smell of the dead and sometimes it is extremely potent. There are some very horrific scenes.”
Britain’s Ambassador to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Steven Fisher, said that security problems in Port-au-Prince were hampering the relief effort as people awaiting aid grew frustrated.
He told the BBC: “Nobody can go anywhere without security in the city. No aid workers can go anywhere without taking risks with security. That adds to the difficulty of delivering the aid because you not only have to have transport – which is rare – you also have to have some sort of security with you, or you are taking a risk. People are getting angry, people are getting hungry and thirsty.”
The Department for International Development (DfID) said £2 million of the £6 million in aid pledged by the UK Government would be spent on providing logistical support and communications to help speed up the distribution of supplies.
But a “reliable pipeline” is still lacking to get aid through to the people of Haiti, the chief executive of the British Red Cross said today.
Sir Nicholas Young told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 that the British people had supported the fundraising campaign “incredibly generously” but that had to be backed up by organisation on the ground in the shattered island.
He said: “The need is to get the aid out from the airport to the people and to get it out in an orderly way that makes sure those most in need get it.
“A measure of law and order on the streets is absolutely vital. These are desperate people in desperate circumstances and the sooner we get a reliable pipeline of aid out to them the better.”
Aftershocks measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale hit Haiti yesterday as rescue teams continued their desperate search for possible survivors trapped in rubble and pulled more bodies out.
Hopes of finding a missing British woman alive were fading after the bodies of her bosses were found among the rubble of the United Nation’s headquarters.
Relatives of Ann Barnes, 59, a UN worker, said that they feared the worst as she has been unaccounted for since the earthquake hit Haiti on Tuesday.
A Foreign Office spokesman said it was in contact with Ms Barnes’s family but had no confirmed reports of British casualties.
The UN said the bodies of its Haiti mission chief, Hedi Annabi, his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa and Doug Coates, the acting UN police commissioner, were recovered from the collapsed building.
Cash continued to pour into the Haiti Earthquake Appeal, with people across the UK donating £10 million in just 24 hours.
Gordon Brown praised the generosity of British people and added thatr the tragedy was “a summons to action for every continent”.
Charities and aid agencies battled to get emergency supplies to the stricken island and planes that usually carry holidaymakers were pressed into service to carry vital supplies.
Seats were stripped out of economy class to make way for cargo, including containers of water, purification equipment and pumps.
René Préval, the Haitian President, implored the international community to better co-ordinate the massive aid effort for his country and not to squabble over how to provide it.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said that there were still no official estimates of the death toll and that unofficial figures of 100,000 may be too low.
Mrs Clinton, who arrived in the devastated capital Port-au-Prince aboard a US Coast Guard plane last night, held talks with US officials organising the relief operation and with Mr Préval.
"We are here at the invitation of your government to help you," she told a press conference.
"As President Obama has said, we will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead. I know the resilience and strength of the Haitian people. You have been severely tested. But I believe that Haiti can come back stronger and better in the future."
Mr Preval, who said he had just visited a man pulled out of the rubble alive after four days by American rescuers, said Mrs Clinton's visit "warmed our hearts." The two countries were to unveil a statement later today about how they planned to cooperate together.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, is also expected to arrive in Haiti today. Mr Ban will assess the Caribbean nation's needs in the wake of Tuesday's devastating earthquake and attempt to boost the shattered morale of the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, after the worst disaster in the world body's history dealt a crippling blow to the 12,000-strong mission there.
He said that his one-day visit aimed "to show his solidarity with the people of Haiti and UN staff" and to "assess the humanitarian assistance effort and the scale of the disaster for himself."
With food, water and US troops flowing to Haiti, international donors were struggling to push supplies through a clogged airport to stricken earthquake survivors.
Relief workers warned unless supplies were quickly delivered, Port-au-Prince would degenerate into lawlessness.
Mr Preval admitted it was “an extremely difficult situation”, but he stressed people must keep their cool and not “throw accusations at each other”.
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