Major quake rocks Haiti

[Yoshitsune Minamoto]

World
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Jan 13, 2010

Major quake rocks Haiti

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All communications with the island went down after the earthquake and no details were immediately available on any people killed or injured in the disaster. -- PHOTO: AFP

<!-- story content : start --> PORT-AU-PRINCE - A HUGE quake measuring 7.0 rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti on Tuesday toppling buildings and causing widespread damage and panic, officials and AFP witnesses said. 'I think it's really a catastrophe of major proportions,' Haiti's ambassador to the United States, Raymond Alcide Joseph, told CNN television. All communications with the island went down after the earthquake and no details were immediately available on any people killed or injured in the disaster. A tsunami alert for the Carribean region was immediately issued after the earthquake struck at 2153 GMT (5.53am Singapore time). An AFP correspondent said the ground shook for more than a minute. Later three aftershocks measuring 5.9, 5.5 and 5.1 on the moment magnitude scale hit, US officials said.

In Port-au-Prince, local media reported that the presidential palace, parliament, cathedral and several ministries were badly damaged. An AFP correspondent in Petionville, a suburb east of the capital, said one three-story building, housing two offices, was toppled by the quake, and a tractor was already at the scene trying to dig out victims as people fled onto the streets in panic. The up-scale area is home to many foreign diplomats and members of a major United Nations mission to the country. The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the powerful quake was initially measured at 7.3 and struck 16km from the capital Port-au-Prince, and 27km from Petionville. The earthquake struck at a depth of 10km, the USGS said. -- AFP

 

[Yoshitsune Minamoto]

Fears of major catastrophe as 7.0 quake rocks Haiti

Fears of major catastrophe as 7.0 quake rocks Haiti

<cite>AFP - <abbr class="timedate" title="2 hours 26 minutes ago">2 hours 26 minutes ago</abbr></cite>

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - – A huge quake measuring 7.0 rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti Tuesday toppling buildings and causing widespread damage and panic, officials and AFP witnesses said. "I think it's really a catastrophe of major proportions," Haiti's ambassador to the United States, Raymond Alcide Joseph, told CNN television. A local doctor told an AFP reporter in the city that hundreds of people are feared dead. "When we get an idea of the toll it will be measured in the hundreds," the doctor said. All communications with the island went down after the earthquake and no details were immediately available on any people killed or injured in the disaster.

A tsunami alert for the Carribean region was immediately issued after the earthquake struck at 2153 GMT. An AFP correspondent said the ground shook for more than a minute. Later three aftershocks measuring 5.9, 5.5 and 5.1 on the moment magnitude scale hit, US officials said. In Port-au-Prince, local media reported that the presidential palace, parliament, cathedral and several ministries were badly damaged. An AFP correspondent in Petionville, a suburb east of the capital, said one three-story building, housing two offices, was toppled by the quake, and a tractor was already at the scene trying to dig out victims as people fled onto the streets in panic.

The up-scale area is home to many foreign diplomats and members of a major United Nations mission to the country. A local UN employee said the earthquake had destroyed the headquarters of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country. "The headquarters of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti has been destroyed in large part. There are numerous people underneath the rubble, both dead and injured," a local employee of the force said. In New York, UN chief Ban Ki-moon issued a statement saying "my heart goes out to the people of Haiti after this devastating earthquake.

"At this time of tragedy, I am very concerned for the people of Haiti and also for the many United Nations staff who serve there." The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the powerful quake was initially measured at 7.3 and struck 16 kilometers (ten miles) from the capital Port-au-Prince, and 27 kilometers (17 miles) from Petionville. The earthquake struck at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), the USGS said. In Washington, President Barack Obama said the United States stood ready to help. Related article:US ready to help "My thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been affected by this earthquake," Obama said. "We are closely monitoring the situation and we stand ready to assist the people of Haiti."

A US Southern Command spokesman in Miami said the agency was "monitoring the situation and coordinating everything to respond rapidly."
A tsunami warning issued for Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic was scrapped shortly afterwards. Haiti's ambassador told CNN he was heartbroken as he had just spoken by telephone with a senior presidential aide who described scenes of chaos and devastation. "He had to stop his car just about half an hour ago, and take to the streets, start walking, but he said houses were crumbling on the right side of the street and the left side of the street," Joseph said.

Already the poorest nation in the Americas, Haiti has been hit by a series of disasters recently and was battered by hurricanes in 2008. Chronology : Major quakes and tsunamis Four big storms -- Tropical Storm Fay and hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike -- pounded impoverished Haiti in August and September 2008, killing a total of 793 people and leaving more than 300 others missing, according to government figures. The country was also gripped by a tense political standoff in April 2008 amid riots over skyrocketing food prices. UN troops are a regular sight throughout much of the country. Seventy percent of Haiti's population lives on less than two dollars per day and half of its 8.5 million people are unemployed.

According to official figures, food insecurity already affects more than a quarter of Haiti's population, some 1.9 million people, with women and children the worst affected. The Food and Agriculture Organization has designated Haiti as one of the world's most economically vulnerable countries. The WFP serves one meal a day to more than 500,000 Haitian schoolchildren, providing them with what is often their only meal of the day. The organization also feeds 100,000 women who are pregnant or breastfeeding and 50,000 children under the age of five. Since mid-2004, the Brazilian-led MINUSTAH has been keeping the peace in the impoverished Caribbean island nation.

 

[Shin Orochi]

Poor standards led to disaster

World
Home > Breaking News > World > Story
Jan 14, 2010

DISASTER IN HAITI
Poor standards led to disaster

<!-- by line --> <!-- end by line --> WASHINGTON - US ENGINEERS on Wednesday blamed lax building standards for the devastation in Haiti, where a powerful earthquake brought buildings crumbling to the ground, trapping thousands beneath rubble. 'The quality of construction in Haiti, even in buildings that are supposedly engineered construction, is not good at all,' said Farzad Naeim, president of the board of directors of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). 'There's no question that the lack of quality control and not using engineering knowledge that is widely available had something to do with the massive devastation we're seeing,' said Mr Naeim, who edited the Seismic Design Handbook and is vice-president of a structural engineering firm in California.

From photographs he has seen of the devastation in Haiti, Mr Naeim said many of the larger buildings were built using nonductile concrete - described in a report presented at the World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Beijing in 2008 as 'arguably... the greatest seismic life safety hazard in many urban centers worldwide because of the collapse potential'. Many of the buildings that collapsed in Haiti 'have been there for ages and generally older buildings are not up to the task. And the money is not there to bring them up to the task.' Ron Hamburger of the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations said the wreckage in Port-au-Prince was worsened by the fact that the powerful quake had its epicenter just a few miles outside the Haitian capital.

'A magnitude seven earthquake located 10 miles from the city is a very, very serious event,' Mr Hamburger said. 'Surviving an earthquake like that takes very rigorous design rules and building code and enforcement that things are actually constructed in accordance with the code... I have heard that Haiti does not have strict building code enforcement, and so it's likely even the things that people believed to be reinforced were not constructed or designed to an adequate standard.' -- AFP