Nineteen-year-old patient Logista Floxene was brought here by family members from Port-au-Prince. She says she lost one leg and the other is broken. It happened after concrete collapsed on her.

International aid groups, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.N. Development Program and World Food Program, are providing assistance.

But business owner Joseph Mathiado-Gustave says most of the help comes from local people.

He says we, the people of Gonaives, are the ones that are helping the people from other places with everything from food to health care until they can get back to their own towns.

Some people in Gonaives are able to earn an income. A fisherman at the beach prepares a net to get ready for the day's catch. Street vendors sell their wares across from city hall. A cyber café is up and running, and several young men are surfing the web on laptop computers. But others, like Klebert Celestin, are living hand to mouth and are out of work.

"I don't have no job right now. I don't have no job," said Celestin.

Haitian Senator Youri Latortue, who represents this region, wants a plan to decentralize Haiti's government and business, and to move many people outside Port-au-Prince

"We can't rebuild on the same place," he said. "The government and the parliament and the civil society have to look for a new plan and ask the international community to build a new fund able to finance the new plan."