Across USA, many still wait for word about loved ones in Haiti

Across USA, many still wait for word about loved ones in Haiti

David Apperson's clothes hang untouched in his closet. His office door remains shut. His Harley-Davidson motorcycle sits in the garage, just where he parked it before he went to Haiti on a business trip in January. Since an earthquake leveled Haiti's capital city, Port-au-Prince, on Jan. 12, Apperson's family in Sparks, Ga., had not heard from him. His wife, Lorie, says she knew her husband was not alive, but she could not face dismantling any part of his life until his body came home. On Wednesday, 50 days since their last contact, she finally received word: His remains were found. He was coming home. "It's a call I've been waiting for," she says, crying. "Even though I knew for two months he was dead, it's just so hard right now." Apperson is the last American whom searchers were looking for in the rubble of the luxurious Hotel Montana, which was popular among foreign visitors. The bodies of all 17 Americans reported at the hotel have now been found. The quake left at least 200,000 people dead and 300,000 injured. The tremors have left much of the capital and neighboring towns along the western coast in ruins. The United Nations estimates that 285,000 houses collapsed, leaving 1.3 million people living in makeshift tent settlements. Efforts to recover Americans at the Hotel Montana have gotten the most attention, but more are missing elsewhere. The State Department lists 3,000 people whose families phoned to report them missing. Of those, it estimates 2,000 Americans are unaccounted for, spokesman John Echard Jr. says. Many are Haitian Americans, spokesman Gordon Duguid says. The International Committee of the Red Cross has a website on which people have posted photos and descriptions. About 23,000 people have listed someone; half the postings were from the United States. Continue to the complete story at "USAToday.com":http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-03-07-haiti_N.htm