HAITI’S football continues to count its casualties in the wake of the horrific 7.0-magnitude earthquake that shook the impoverished Caribbean nation last week Tuesday.

The country’s head coach Alix Avin succumbed to his injuries Wednesday night, pushing the confirmed death toll of the football fraternity past the 30-mark.

Dozens are still reportedly trapped beneath piles of concrete created by the collapse of the three-storey Haitian Football Federation (HFF) secretariat building, while others in the wider Port-au-Prince area are unaccounted for.

Also confirmed dead in the immediate aftermath of the devastating quake are former senior team coach Gerard Cineus and men’s youth and women’s coach Jean Ives Labaze. The latter was at the helm when Haiti’s Under-17 male team won the 2006 CFU Cup and qualified for 2007 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in South Korea.

Also numbered among the dead are several senior committee members, including administrators, referees, other coaches, players (male and female), medical personnel and office staff. Some perished at the HFF headquarters where a number of meetings were in progress.

On hearing the news of Avin’s passing, the man spearheading FIFA’s mission in the Haitian cause, Jamaica’s Captain Horace Burrell, was heartbroken.

“It’s another piece of bad news that makes my heart sink when one considers what has happened in that country and how much football has been affected,” said the CFU senior vice-president.

“This death of yet another football colleague is really sad and underscores the rate at which life is wasting, not only within the football family, but the country on a whole,” said Burrell, who visited devastated Port-au-Prince on a fact-finding mission on behalf of the worldwide football family last weekend.

HFF president Dr Yves Jean Bart, who was badly injured and was the only survivor of a committee meeting he was chairing at the time the quake struck, was up to yesterday still struggling to return to health after being seen by doctors who dressed his wounds.

But reports out of Haiti yesterday claimed the battered and bruised Dr Jean Bart remained resolute in leading efforts to determine the extent of the disaster’s impact on the country’s football and has consequently set up an emergency committee to lead the charge.

Surviving members of Haiti’s football, it is said, have also pooled their resources and energies in an effort to clear rubble at the site of the federation building in an attempt to dig for the decomposing bodies of their colleagues.

The stench rising from the heaps of fallen concrete is said to be “unbearable”, but the will to accomplish the job is unwavering.

On his visit to Haiti’s capital on Sunday, Burrell painted a grim picture of the death and destruction that has overwhelmed the country.

“The most painful part of my visit was to witness three bodies of our Haitian FF colleagues in a state of partial decomposition and still pinned by heavy concrete,” said the CONCACAF Executive Committee member and FIFA Disciplinary Committee member earlier this week.

Haiti’s death toll is put at nearly 200,000, and could rise in the coming days and weeks.

In an initial response to the disaster-struck nation, FIFA has committed US$250,000, while FIFA vice-president, Korean Chung Moon-Jung of Hyundai motor fame, has pledged US$500,000 from his own funds.

Another FIFA vice-president, Trinidadian Austin ‘Jack’ Warner, has also committed US$100,000 from his personal money.

Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, was the second Caribbean country — after Cuba in 1938 — to play in the FIFA World Cup held in West Germany in 1974.

They surprised the world in their debut game when Emmanuel Sanon scored to give them a lead over Italy, but eventually lost 1-3.

They went on to lose 0-7 to Poland and 1-4 to Argentina in their other preliminary round matches.