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Thousands feared dead as powerful earthquake hits Haiti
AP, 13 January 2010, 10:00am
ORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI: The strongest earthquake in more than 200 years rocked Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital where people screamed for
help and heavily damaging the National Palace, UN peacekeeper headquarters and other buildings. US officials reported bodies in the streets and an aid official described ``total disaster and chaos.''
United Nations officials said hours after the 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:53pm that they still couldn't account for a large number of UN personnel.
Communications were widely disrupted, making it impossible to get a full picture of damage as powerful aftershocks shook a desperately poor country where many buildings are flimsy. Electricity was out in some places.
Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Port-au-Prince, told US colleagues before phone service failed that ``there must be thousands of people dead,'' according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Sara Fajardo.
``He reported that it was just total disaster and chaos, that there were clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince,'' Fajardo said from the group's offices in Maryland.
State Department spokesman P J Crowley said in Washington that US embassy personnel were ``literally in the dark'' after power failed.
``They reported structures down. They reported a lot of walls down. They did see a number of bodies in the street and on the sidewalk that had been hit by debris. So clearly, there's going to be serious loss of life in this,'' he said.
The Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, said at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were believed trapped in rubble.
Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief in New York, said late Tuesday that the headquarters of the 9,000-member Haiti peacekeeping mission and other UN installations were seriously damaged.
``Contacts with the UN on the ground have been severely hampered,'' Le Roy said in a statement, adding: ``For the moment, a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for.''
The temblor appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other, said earthquake expert Tom Jordan at the University of Southern California. The quake's size and proximity to populated Port-au-Prince likely caused widespread casualties and structural damage, he said.
``It's going to be a real killer,'' he said. ``Whenever something like this happens, you just hope for the best.''
Most of Haiti's 9 million people are desperately poor, and after years of political instability the country has no real construction standards. In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60 percent of the buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.
Tuesday's quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, and some panicked residents in the capital of Santo Domingo fled from their shaking homes. But no major damage was reported there.
AP, 13 January 2010, 10:00am
ORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI: The strongest earthquake in more than 200 years rocked Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital where people screamed for
help and heavily damaging the National Palace, UN peacekeeper headquarters and other buildings. US officials reported bodies in the streets and an aid official described ``total disaster and chaos.''
United Nations officials said hours after the 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:53pm that they still couldn't account for a large number of UN personnel.
Communications were widely disrupted, making it impossible to get a full picture of damage as powerful aftershocks shook a desperately poor country where many buildings are flimsy. Electricity was out in some places.
Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Port-au-Prince, told US colleagues before phone service failed that ``there must be thousands of people dead,'' according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Sara Fajardo.
``He reported that it was just total disaster and chaos, that there were clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince,'' Fajardo said from the group's offices in Maryland.
State Department spokesman P J Crowley said in Washington that US embassy personnel were ``literally in the dark'' after power failed.
``They reported structures down. They reported a lot of walls down. They did see a number of bodies in the street and on the sidewalk that had been hit by debris. So clearly, there's going to be serious loss of life in this,'' he said.
The Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, said at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were believed trapped in rubble.
Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief in New York, said late Tuesday that the headquarters of the 9,000-member Haiti peacekeeping mission and other UN installations were seriously damaged.
``Contacts with the UN on the ground have been severely hampered,'' Le Roy said in a statement, adding: ``For the moment, a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for.''
The temblor appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other, said earthquake expert Tom Jordan at the University of Southern California. The quake's size and proximity to populated Port-au-Prince likely caused widespread casualties and structural damage, he said.
``It's going to be a real killer,'' he said. ``Whenever something like this happens, you just hope for the best.''
Most of Haiti's 9 million people are desperately poor, and after years of political instability the country has no real construction standards. In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60 percent of the buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.
Tuesday's quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, and some panicked residents in the capital of Santo Domingo fled from their shaking homes. But no major damage was reported there.
