Twisted, covered in dusty rags or piled into mounds, the dead are strewn around the streets of Haiti's ruined capital.

Some have blankets draped over them, others are left to rot in the sun. City workers finally began the grisly task of picking them up yesterday, using vast dumper trucks equipped with automated loaders.

People are comparing Port-au-Prince to a scene from Armageddon, but that doesn't do justice to the breathtaking scale of the horror on its streets. When you finally grow used to the stench of rotting flesh and open sewage, or dust-covered crowds roaming the pavements scavenging for water or food, another terrible sight will emerge from the tangled rubble.

The death toll from the biggest earthquake to hit the region for 200 years is estimated at somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000, but nobody knows for sure and it's hard not to conclude that the eventual total will be far, far higher.

A sprawling metropolis of two million people has been pulled to pieces. Electricity, water, and sewage networks no longer function, and the most basic infrastructure is in disarray. This crisis will grow worse before it improves.

Yesterday, grief and shock gave way to impatience and anger at the failure of any meaningful aid to arrive despite apocalyptic images of outdoor morgues, and bodies in states of rigor mortis which are being beamed around the world. Frantic for help, local people piled up corpses to |

create roadblocks, hoping to shock the outside world into a speedier reaction.

The fear now is that frayed tempers will lead to a complete breakdown in law and order.

Outside the now-ruined Presidential Palace in the city centre a tense crowd of around 1,000 people gathered. They stood behind a security cordon keeping them away from Red Cross lorries who were afraid to distribute supplies in case it sparked pandemonium. “I am furious. We have been here for four days, and haven't seen anything: no food, no water, no tents,” said Jean Claude Hillaire.

“I am so hungry. And want to know why these people have no aid. Why is nothing coming? We've had nothing from the US, nothing from the international community. We feel angry and abandoned.

“20,000 people are sleeping in this park, and no-one is helping us. We are yelling for help. I can take you down the road, for the next mile into the port, there are hundreds of bodies lying in the street.

“The world needs to see this suffering, and see this death, and tell its leaders that something must be done to help, right now.”

With a nod to Haiti's history, as the first former slave nation to gain independence, he added: “I'm especially angry with Barack Obama. The people of this country, Haiti, were the first black people who put a mark on liberty. We now need help from the first black President. We don't need it in 4,5 or 20 days. We need it today.”

The city's port, roughly a mile away, is conspicuously empty of the vast aid vessels that have been promised. Food and water supplies remain stranded at a seemingly-dysfunctional airfield on the outskirts of town.

“It's utter chaos at the airport,” said Mark Pearson of the British charity Shelterbox who was yesterday waiting for supplies to land. “The priority at the moment is still search and rescue and then after that aid, so obviously there is frustration. People are hunting around for water. That’s the big need.”

In the absence of food aid, people who haven't been able to salvage food from their ruined homes are being forced to rely on street vendors, who are selling fruit and basic supplies at inflated prices. But since many of them only have the money that was in their pocket when Tuesday's earthquake struck.