Haiti Earthquake | January 12, 2010 | 60 comments

7.0 earthquake hits Haiti

source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/12/haiti.earthquake/index.html

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A major earthquake struck just off the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, sparking a tsunami watch for parts of the Caribbean, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

There was no immediate report of damage or injuries from the quake. However, The Associated Press reported that a hospital had collapsed.

The quake had a reported magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles (16km) off the coast and about 6 miles (10 km) underground, according to the USGS.

A tsunami watch was posted for Haiti and parts of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, but historical data suggests a destructive, widespread tsunami was not a threat, the USGS reported.
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60 comments // 7.0 earthquake hits Haiti

  • EthicalVegan
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      EthicalVegan  

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      Some aid groups with offices in Port-au-Prince were also busy searching for their own dead and missing.

      Sixteen members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti were killed and as many as 100 other United Nations employees were missing after the collapse of the mission’s headquarters in the Christopher Hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince.

      Forty or more other United Nations employees were missing at a sprawling compound occupied by United Nations agencies. Ten additional employees had been in a villa nearby.

      It was one of the deadliest single days for United Nations employees. The head of the group’s Haitian mission, Mr. Annabi, a Tunisian, and his deputy were among the missing, said Alain Le Roy, the United Nations peacekeeping chief.

      The Brazilian Army said 11 of its soldiers had been killed. During a driving tour of the capital on Wednesday, Bernice Robertson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she saw at least 30 bodies, most covered with plastic bags or sheets. She also witnessed heroic recovery efforts. “There are people digging with their hands, searching for people in the rubble,” she said in a video interview via Skype. “There was unimaginable destruction.”

      Paul McPhun, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, described scenes of chaos.

      When staff members tried to travel by car, “they were mobbed by crowds of people,” Mr. McPhun said. “They just want help, and anybody with a car is better off than they are.”

      Contaminated drinking water is a longstanding problem in Haiti, causing high rates of illness that put many people in the hospital. Providing sanitation and clean water is one of the top priorities for aid organizations.

      More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled Haiti through Tuesday night and into early Wednesday, according to Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,” she said.

      David Wald, a seismologist with the Geological Survey, said that an earthquake of this strength had not struck Haiti in more than 200 years, a fact apparently based on contemporaneous accounts. The most powerful one to strike the country in recent years measured 6.7 magnitude in 1984.

      Bob Poff, a Salvation Army official, described in a written account posted on the Salvation Army’s Web site how he had loaded injured victims — “older, scared, bleeding and terrified” — into the back of his truck and set off in search of help.

      In two hours, he managed to travel less than a mile, he said.

      The account described how Mr. Poff and hundreds of neighbors spent Tuesday night outside in a playground. Every tremor sent ripples of fear through the survivors, providing “another reminder that we are not yet finished with this calamity,” he wrote.

      He continued, “And when it comes, all of the people cry out and the children are terrified.”

      Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail message to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. S O S. S O S ... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”

      Photos from Haiti on Wednesday showed a hillside scraped nearly bare of its houses, which had tumbled into the ravine below.

      Simon Romero reported from Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Reporting was contributed by Marc Lacey and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City, Ginger Thompson and Brian Knowlton from Washington, Neil MacFarquhar, Denise Grady and Liz Robbins from New York, and Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro.

    • 3 years ago
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      A Red Cross field team of officials from several nations had to spend Wednesday night in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to gather its staff before taking the six-hour drive in the morning across the border to the earthquake zone.

      “We were on the plane here with a couple of different agencies, and they all are having similar challenges of access,” Colin Chaperon, a field director for the American Red Cross, said in a telephone interview. “There is a wealth of resources out there, and everybody has the good will to go in and support the Haitian Red Cross.”

      The quake struck just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, ravaging the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroying some of its most important cultural symbols.

      Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

      He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”

      President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.

      Mr. Obama said that United States aid agencies were moving swiftly to get help to Haiti and that search-and-rescue teams were en route. He described the reports of destruction as “truly heart-wrenching,” made more cruel given Haiti’s long-troubled circumstances. Mr. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what the nation needed. But he urged Americans to go to the White House’s Web site, www.whitehouse.gov, to find ways to donate money.

      “This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the morning in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side.

      Aid agencies said they would open their storehouses of food and water in Haiti, and the World Food Program was flying in nearly 100 tons of ready-to-eat meals and high-energy biscuits from El Salvador. The United Nations said it was freeing up $10 million in emergency relief money, the European Union pledged $4.4 million and groups like Doctors Without Borders were setting up clinics in tents and open-air triage centers to treat the injured.

      Supplies began filtering in from the Dominican Republic as charter flights were restarted between Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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    • http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14haiti.html?th&emc=th

      Haiti Lies in Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead

      By SIMON ROMERO - The New York Times
      Published: January 13, 2010

      PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Survivors strained desperately on Wednesday against the chunks of concrete that buried this city along with thousands of its residents, rich and poor, from shantytowns to the presidential palace, in the devastating earthquake that struck late Tuesday afternoon.

      Calling the death toll “unimaginable” as he surveyed the wreckage, Haiti’s president, René Préval, said he had no idea where he would sleep. Schools, hospitals and a prison collapsed. Sixteen United Nations peacekeepers were killed and at least 140 United Nations workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hédi Annabi. The city’s archbishop, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, was feared dead.

      And the poor who define this nation squatted in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble.

      Limbs protruded from disintegrated concrete, muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings — many of them poorly constructed in the first place — as Haiti struggled to grasp the unknown toll from its worst earthquake in more than 200 years.

      In the midst of the chaos, no one was able to offer an estimate of the number of people who had been killed or injured, though there was widespread concern that there were likely to be thousands of casualties.

      “Please save my baby!” Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside the St.-Esprit Hospital in the city. Her child, a girl about 4 years old, writhed in pain in the hospital’s chaotic courtyard, near where a handful of corpses lay under white blankets. “There is no one, nothing, no medicines, no explanations for why my daughter is going to die.”

      Governments and aid agencies from Beijing to Grand Rapids began marshaling supplies and staffs to send here, though the obstacles proved frustrating just one day after the powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit. Power and phone service were out. Flights were severely limited at Port-au-Prince’s main airport, telecommunications were barely functioning, operations at the port were shut down and most of the medical facilities had been severely damaged, if not leveled.

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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    • http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/13/haiti.death.profile/index.html

      A final goodbye before 'everything fell'

      By Ashley Fantz
      CNN
      January 13, 2010 12:16 p.m. EST

      On Friday Martin Poitevien said goodbye to her parents at Miami International Airport before they flew home to Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

      "My mom is a worrier so I just told her, 'Stop with your worry. Go home and enjoy your life with Dad. Go home and have the happiness and peace you've earned and deserve.' I will remember this always because she didn't say anything. She just smiled," Poitevien said in a phone interview Wednesday.

      Four days after the visit, a few hours after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the Haitian capital, Poitevien's brother called to say he had gone to their parents' house to make sure they were all right. He saw his father's feet poking up from the rubble. Seventy-five-year-old Fede Poitevien died in his living room. By Wednesday, Innocent Poitevien's body also was found, her daughter said.

      The couple had spent their lives in one of the Haiti's most depressed districts, Carrefour. In a nation considered the Western Hemisphere's poorest, the Poiteviens worked tirelessly to maintain the family pharmacy, putting every cent toward their children's educations.

      Martin Poitevien is a clinical cancer researcher in Miramar, Florida. She left Haiti in 1986, shortly after her husband was murdered, she said.

      She first moved to Canada and then to South Florida with her young daughters.

      "The girls really adored their grandparents. My father acted like my daughters' father in many ways," she said. "My parents were strong people, but I must be the strong one now. I am expected to be that way. I have not told my daughters yet. I am not sure how to tell them."

      "Those days ... at least ... to have them [before]," she paused, "everything fell."

      Over the past few weeks, the grandparents doted on the girls, taking them for long walks in their suburban neighborhood and speaking Creole with them.

      "We are close so I knew, by 10 p.m. last night, 'I said something is wrong.' For me at that time, that's when it hit me," Poitevien said.

      At Notre Dame d'Haiti Catholic Church in Miami's vibrant Little Haiti neighborhood, the Rev. Reginald Jean-Mary recalled spending time with Fede Poitevien. "He was chatting and telling me how happy it made him to be at the Mass and how inspired he felt. We were telling him how good he looked for his age," Jean-Mary said.

      The church will host a prayer service at 7:30 p.m. ET Wednesday and is meeting in the afternoon to discuss how best to send supplies and financial assistance to Haiti.

      The pastor also is working on what he'll tell his congregation -- many of whom lost relatives and friends in the quake.

      "You aren't going to tell people, 'Well, that's the way things are,' " he said. "You just have to listen to them and be there for them and also reassure them that the light won't turn off on Haiti. In darkness, there is a pinpoint of light. No matter what the rest of the world may think of Haiti, how it's a country that can feel forgotten, we are not a doomed people."

    • 3 years ago
  • telcod
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      telcod  

    • Mother nature is a mother. The capital building picture on CNN indicates that either no one is building to code, rich or poor or there was a whole lotta shaking going on. Man proposes, God disposes.

    • 3 years ago
  • trut
  • nkeg87
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    • This is why MSF exists. and I why I want to work with them. Heres a link to support their work in Haiti for the victims of the quake.

      http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/haiti-share.cfm

      Your gift today will support emergency medical care for the men, women, and children affected by the earthquake in Haiti. Please give as generously as you can to our Haiti Earthquake Response and help us save lives. DONATE NOW

    • 3 years ago
  • JanforGore
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  • EthicalVegan
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    • http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/impact/

      HOW YOU CAN HELP!

      Earthquake strikes Haiti
      A major earthquake struck near Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, the USGS reported. Haiti's ambassador to the U.S. said one witness described it as a "catastrophe." Here are some organizations specifically helping Haiti.
      Full Story

      How you can help:
      • International Medical Corps
      • Direct Relief International
      • World Vision
      • International Relief Teams
      • Yéle Haiti
      • American Red Cross
      • Operation USA
      • CARE
      • Catholic Relief Services
      • World Food Programme
      • World Concern
      • Save the Children
      • UNICEF USA

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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    • Mexico, which suffered a devastating earthquake in 1985 that killed some 10,000 people, was sending a team including doctors, search and rescue dogs and infrastructure damage experts, said Salvador Beltran, the undersecretary of foreign relations for Latin America and the Caribbean.

      Haitian musician Wyclef Jean urged his fans to donate to earthquake relief efforts: "We must think ahead for the aftershock, the people will need food, medicine, shelter, etc.," Jean said on his Web site.

      Eva DeHart at the humanitarian organization For Haiti With Love in Palm Harbor, Florida, said colleagues at the group's base in Cap Haitien reported that northern town was spared damage. But she said damage to government buildings in the capital would make coordinating aid difficult.

      In Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, dozens of people gathered at the Veye-Yo community center, where a pastor led them in prayer. Members embraced each other as they tried to contact relatives back home.

      Tony Jeanthenor said he had succeeded in reaching a family friend in Haiti who told of hearing people cry out for help from under debris.

      "The level of anxiety is high," Jeanthenor said. "Haiti has been through trauma since 2004, from coup d'etat to hurricanes, now earthquakes."

      Associated Press videographer Pierre Richard Luxama in Haiti and Associated Press writers David Koop and Olga R. Rodriguez in Mexico City; David McFadden and Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Matthew Lee in Washington; Alicia Chang in Los Angeles, Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Tamara Lush in Tampa, Fla., and Jennifer Kay and Christine Armario in Miami contributed to this report.

      Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953210,00.html#ixzz0cU0AY0se

    • 3 years ago
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    • "Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official visiting Port-au-Prince. "The sky is just gray with dust.

      Bahn said there were rocks strewn about and he saw a ravine where several homes had stood: "It's just full of collapsed walls and rubble and barbed wire."

      In the community of Thomassin, just outside Port-au-Prince, Alain Denis said neighbors told him the only road to the capital had been cut and phones were all dead so it was hard to determine the extent of the damage.

      "At this point, everything is a rumor," he said. "It's dark. It's nighttime."

      Jocelyn Valcin, a resident of Boynton Beach, Flordia who flew in to Miami International Airport from Port-au-Prince on Tuesday evening, said he was at the airport when the earthquake hit.

      "The whole building was cracked down," Valcin said. "The whole outside deteriorated."

      Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N.'s special envoy for Haiti, issued a statement saying his office would do whatever he could to help the nation recover and rebuild.

      "My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti," he said.

      President Barack Obama ordered U.S. officials to start preparing in case humanitarian assistance was needed.

      Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said his government planned to send a military aircraft carrying canned foods, medicine and drinking water and also would dispatch a team of 50 rescue workers.

      Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953210,00.html#ixzz0cU0311iK

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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      EthicalVegan  

    • The Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, said at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were believed trapped in rubble.

      With phone service erratic, much of the early communication came from social media such as Twitter. Richard Morse, a well-known musician who manages the famed Olafson Hotel, kept up a stream of dispatches on the aftershocks and damage reports. The news, based mostly on second-hand reports and photos, was disturbing, with people screaming in fear and roads blocked with debris. Belair, a slum even in the best of times, was said to be "a broken mess."

      The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said. USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti. In 1946, a magnitude-8.1 quake struck the Dominican Republic and also shook Haiti, producing a tsunami that killed 1,790 people.

      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.

      In eastern Cuba, houses shook but there were also no reports of significant damage.

      "We felt it very strongly and I would say for a long time. We had time to evacuate," said Monsignor Dionisio Garcia, archbishop of Santiago.

      The damage in Haiti, however, was clearly vast.

      Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953210,00.html#ixzz0cTztcRRz

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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    • The headquarters of the 9,000-member Haiti peacekeeping mission and other U.N. installations were seriously damaged, according to Alain Le Roy, the U.N. peacekeeping chief in New York.

      "Contacts with the U.N. 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."

      Despite the destruction, the capital was largely peaceful.

      The 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, leaving large numbers of people unaccounted for, including many of the United Nations personnel who have been keeping the peace in the country since a 2004 rebellion ousted the president.

      President Rene Preval and his wife survived the earthquake, according to Robert Manuel, Haiti's ambassador to Mexico. He said he had no other details.

      Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Port-au-Prince, told U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

      Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953210,00.html#ixzz0cTzmDjfJ

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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    • http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953210,00.html

      Haiti Hit by Largest Quake in 200 Years

      Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010

      http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1001/ap_haiti_quake_0113.jpg

      (PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti) — A powerful earthquake struck Haiti's capital on Tuesday with withering force, toppling everything from simple shacks to the ornate National Palace. The dead and injured lay in the streets even as strong aftershocks rippled through the impoverished Caribbean country.

      Associated Press journalists based in Port-au-Prince said the damage from the quake — the most powerful to hit Haiti in more than 200 years — is staggering even in a country accustomed to tragedy and disaster. Thousands of people gathered in public squares late into the night, singing hymns and weeping.(See the top 10 news stories of 2009.)

      Many gravely injured people sat in the streets early Wednesday, pleading for doctors. With almost no emergency services to speak of, the surivors had few other options.

      The scope of the disaster remained unclear early Wednesday, and even a rough estimate of the number of casualties was impossible. But it was clear from a tour of the capital that tens of thousands of people had lost their homes and that many had perished. Many buildings in Haiti are flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions.(Watch a video of Indonesia's mud volcano.)

      "The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Louis-Gerard Gilles, a doctor and former senator, as he helped survivors. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."

      An Associated Press videographer saw a wrecked hospital where people screamed for help in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians as well as many poor people.

      Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953210,00.html#ixzz0cTzcaR22

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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  • UrbanGypsy
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      UrbanGypsy  

    • Its amazing that something like this would happen in Haiti of all places. I guess that when things are bad they go on ahead and just get plain WORSE.

      This part of the Caribbean actually suffers from seismic activity from time to time. In Eastern Cuba, its not rare to feel a little tremor from time to time.

    • 3 years ago
  • bushama
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  • Yaemea
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  • EthicalVegan
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      EthicalVegan  

    • In Haiti, a Twitter user filing updates as @fredodupoux wrote simply:

      if anyone in haiti is reading this, please go out and help in the streets, it’s very ugly out there if you haven’t seen it

      Another Twitter user, @Audio_Rydeout, who is in Cite Soleil, Haiti, used his feed in part to complain about what he was seeing on American television, writing that a woman on CNN “is talking bout Haiti is a ‘violent’ nation should ppl on the streets tonight worry….”

      The Web site of the Haitian television station Haitipal is streaming a live discussion, mainly in Creole, with callers who still have mobile phone service sharing information on what they have witnessed and asking for help.

      A source who speaks Creole tells The Lede that Haitipal sems to be getting calls from people with phones on a local cell network called Voila, which is owned by Trilogy International Partners, an American company that operates mobile phone networks in countries including Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic.

      A short news release posted on the Web site of Trilogy International Partners on Tuesday says:

      Our team in Haiti, which operates the wireless carrier Voila, has been working nonstop to assess the damage and impact to our network as we know the community greatly relies upon us for communication; we can confirm that the Voila network continues to be operational.

      In New York, which has a large community of Haitian expatriates, Garry Pierre-Pierre wrote on the Web site of The Haitian Times in Brooklyn:

      Leaders in the Haitian community felt powerless as yet another calamity has hit their native country. With no communication to Haiti in the last three yours, people called each other to see if anyone had heard anything. The suspense is sending a chill as people try to imagine the extent of this catastrophe.

      Four hours ago, a major earthquake shook the capital city to its core and left Port-au-Prince into a smoke haze.

      At this moment, the number of death and people injured are not known. People could be heard screaming and crying. The metropolitan area is home to two million people in an area originally planned for 200,000. Houses are poorly constructed with lax codes, if any.

    • 3 years ago
  • EthicalVegan
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      EthicalVegan  

    • Similar images have been pouring into this page on PicFog, which is a stream of photographs uploaded to the Web by Twitter users.

      More images of badly damaged buildings appeared on Facebook, including several on a page called “Together For Haiti.”

      Update | 9:29 p.m. Among the many thousand messages about the impact of the quake on Twitter are some from users of the social network who appear to be located in Haiti and are using the service to share information about what they have observed and heard.

      The account @InternetHaiti points to this live Skype interview (in French and English) on the Web now with Paolo Chilosi, who is in Haiti.

      The person updating the same account also points out that aftershocks of more than 5.0 “are continuing.”

      The Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean is using his @wyclef Twitter account to appeal to people to donate money to help the victims of the earthquake, writing:

      Warriors Donate to Earthquake relief in Haiti text Yele to 501 501 and visit www.yele.org

      The singer, whose uncle Raymond Joseph is Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, also appealed to Haitian expats to call for American military aid for the nation:

      We need the U.S. military as soon as possible n Haiti. We need the 4 million Haitian that live out side of Haiti to Act now, we need da world!

      In a reply to Mr. Jean, Al Sharpton wrote on his Twitter feed, @TheRevAl:

      @wyclef supplies and manpower. You direct us and we will mobilize to the right place to help. The WORLD must stand with Haiti NOW!

      Also on Twitter, the @RedCross account provided these two updates on its relief efforts:

      Our support is w Haiti. We are accepting donations to our Intl Response Fund. http://bit.ly/4WodAv Follow http://newsroom.redcross.org

      American Red Cross is pledging an initial $200,000 to assist those impacted by the earthquake in Haiti. http://bit.ly/4XMCoB

      Ann Curry, an NBC News journalist, notes on her Twitter feed, @AnnCurry:

      State Department has a # for Americans seeking info about family in Haiti: 1-888-407-4747

      The Associated Press notes “The State Department advises that some callers may receive a recording because of heavy volume of calls.”

      http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/01/12/world/americas/12lede_palais/blog...

      MORE TO FOLLOW...

    • 3 years ago
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    • http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/

      Gleaning Information From Haiti Online

      The Lede - The New York Times News Blog
      The New York Times News Blog
      January 12, 2010, 9:29 pm
      Gleaning Information From Haiti Online
      By ROBERT MACKEY

      Some Haitians have turned to the Web to share information about the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck about 10 miles southwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday evening. Any readers who are in Haiti or in touch with people there are encouraged to use the comment thread below to share first-hand accounts with us, or to point to them on other Web sites.

      Update | 10:29 p.m. The Haitian Twitter user Frederic Dupoux — @fredodupoux — writes that, despite what we heard via Haitian television earlier, “no phones are working,” at least where he is. He appeals to the local companies, “Digicel Voila ! restore phone service ASAP.”

      He also writes in two updates posted within the past hour:

      Just came back from Caribbean Super Market. It looks like ground zero. people are trapped it’s dark we need light and cell phone service.

      It’s really ugly, just like in a bad dream. people need help, get out and help!

      Update | 10:25 p.m. Thanks to a reader who pointed us to this partial list of Twitter users who say they are in Haiti compiled by the Los Angeles Times.

      Update | 10:00 p.m. The Web site Haitifeed.com has video and photographs of some of the damage caused by the earthquake, including a striking image of what it says is the collapsed presidential palace in the capital. Earlier the French news agency AFP had reported that Haitian television streaming online said that the country’s presidential palace and numerous other government buildings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, had “collapsed Tuesday after a massive 7.0 earthquake.”

      MORE TO FOLLOW...

    • 3 years ago
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    • http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/americas/13haiti.html?hp

      By SIMON ROMERO and LIZ ROBBINS - The New York Times
      Published: January 12, 2010

      SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — A fierce earthquake struck Haiti late Tuesday afternoon, causing a crowded hospital to collapse, leveling countless shantytown dwellings and bringing even more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest and most disaster-prone.

      The powerful earthquake of 7.0 magnitude rocked Haiti just before 5 p.m. Eastern time, 10 miles southwest from the densely populated capital of Port-au-Prince, according to the United States Geological Survey. But damage to the capital city of 2 million people was apparently widespread, according to reports from the scene.

      Tequila Minsky, a photographer based in New York who was staying the Oloffson Hotel in Port-Au-Prince, said that a wall at the front of the hotel had fallen down, killing a passerby, and that several nearby buildings had collapsed, trapping people.

      There were at least a dozen aftershocks — the worst two were 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude — that followed in the next hour, and more were expected, according to David Wald, a seismologist with the survey.

      “The main issue here will probably be shaking,” Mr. Wald said, “and this is an area that is particularly vulnerable in terms of construction practice, and with a high population density. There could be a high number of casualties.”

      According to several news reports, a large hospital in the capital had collapsed, and people were screaming in streets full of rubble.

      Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Raymond Alcide Joseph, said in an interview on CNN that the country’s first lady, Elisabeth Débrosse Delatour, called the Haitian consul general in Miami to report that although she and the president, René Préval, were fine, the presidential palace and the nation’s ministry of commerce were damaged.

      PART TWO FOLLOWS (within)...

    • 3 years ago
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    • EthicalVegan:

      http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/americas/13haiti.html?hp=&pagewanted...

      “These are very sturdy buildings,” Mr. Joseph said. “So if those buildings are damaged, can you imagine what’s happened to all these flimsy abodes around Port au Prince in the hillsides. I say it’s a major catastrophe.”

      Mr. Joseph said that he had also spoken to the secretary general of the presidency, Fritz Lonchamps, who told him he was driving through Port au Prince when the earthquake struck.

      “Buildings started to collapse right and left around him,” Mr. Joseph said. “He said, ‘Mr. Ambassador, tell the world it is a catastrophe of major proportion.’”

      The last earthquake of this magnitude to hit Haiti occurred in 1751. But seismologists have known for several years that a major earthquake was possible, if not imminent.

      Elsie St. Louis-Accilien, the director of the Haitian Americans United for Progress in Queens, N.Y., said that she was able to reach the director of Ofatma hospital, in Port-au-Prince. “They are trapped inside,” Ms. St. Louis-Accilien said in a telephone interview. “They were pretty shaken, but they were relieved to be alive.”

      She said that the director said that there was “a lot of smoke, a lot of dust,” and that her phone has been ringing nonstop. “People are calling me, elected officials are calling, asking what we can do.”

      The White House said President Obama was informed of the earthquake at 5:52 p.m. He directed his staff to begin preparations in case humanitarian assistance is needed. The State Department, the United States Agency for International Development and the United States Southern Command began working to coordinate an assessment, aides said.

      “My thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been affected by this earthquake,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “We are closely monitoring the situation and we stand ready to assist the people of Haiti.”

      Haiti, by far the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, has been beset by natural disasters for most of its recent history. The island is struck by an annual series of hurricanes and is particularly vulnerable to storm-related disasters because much of its forests have been chopped down and used for fuel, leaving the country with very little tree cover. In one of its hardest hit years, 2004, Haiti was rocked by powerful Hurricane Jeanne, which caused untold destruction and killed 3,000 people.

      Since 2008, the island has been struck by at least three severe hurricanes — Gustav, Hanna and Ike — that have wrought nearly a billion dollars worth of damage and killed 800 people. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of food riots, health crises and near constant government instability and upheavals.

      Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview on CNN that he had little information about the extent of damage but said the suffering inflicted on the was likely to be “catastrophic.”

      Mr. Joseph said that the one official he had reached — identified by The Associated Press as President Rene Preval’s chief of staff, Fritz Longchamp — told him that houses had crumbled “on the right side of the street and the left side of the street.”

      An Associated Press videographer saw the wrecked hospital in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians. And a United States government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.

      Word of the quake set off a scramble in Haitian communities in the United States by people trying to reach their homeland.

      PART THREE FOLLOWS (within)...

    • 3 years ago
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      PART THREE...

      At Louis Market in Miami’s Little Haiti, customers began streaming in shortly after news of the quake hit the airwaves. They were buying $5 phone cards in a desperate attempt to reach their relatives in Haiti.

      “Everyone who walks in here is crazy, worried, depressed,” said Myrlande Cherenfant, 20, whose family owns the market. “They want to talk to their family members but they can’t get through.

      An earthquake of this magnitude has not hit the region in more than 250 years, according to Mr. Wald. Before Tuesday, the most powerful earthquake to hit the region was 6.7 magnitude, in 1984.

      Delores Clark, a spokeswoman for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, said that scientists were quickly conducting water level measurements and other analyses to determine whether the quake set off a tsunami in other parts of the Caribbean. As of 6 p.m. Eastern, they had not detected one, she said.

      Because the fault that likely caused the earthquake is on land, rather than in the water, Mr. Wald said, there was less of a probability of a tsunami. But such an earthquake likely would mean more damage to the city and its surrounding areas, he added.

      Haiti sits in a part of the world where the movement and jostling of plates cause a monumental earthquake capable of generating a tsunami and leveling cities about once every 50 years, said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The last such earthquake — measuring an 8 in magnitude — struck the Dominican Republic in 1946 and generated a tsunami that rocked Haiti.

      Mr. Fryer said that the agency would continue taking measurements because Haiti’s geology is so complicated and unpredictable.

      “There are all sorts of earthquake mechanisms that are mixed up in that area,” he said. “From what we understand of the mechanism of the earthquake, a tsunami should not have been generated, but nature does give us surprises.”

      Reporting was contributed by Marc Lacey in Mexico City, Anahad O’Connor in New York, Jeff Zeleny in Washington and Damien Cave in Miami.

    • 3 years ago
  • stuknda70s
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  • UrbanGypsy
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      UrbanGypsy  
    • atainder:

      I actually agree. Population growth is only a problem for countries like Haiti. The government in Haiti is virtually non-existent. Its hard enough trying to create jobs for a country like ours, imagine having to create jobs for a population that grows at the rate of Haiti's...

      Its always controversial though, nobody likes when they are told how many kids to have. But I certainly believe having less kids would actually help many of these people lift themselves from poverty.

      This is just one piece of the complex puzzle that needs to be fixed to fix this broken country.

    • 3 years ago
  • ras_menelik
  • Chique
  • nursediesel
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      nursediesel  

    • I'm sure rescue teams are on their way there at this time. People from my home town are probably getting stuff ready to take down there and help with the aide and rescue.

    • 3 years ago
  • ras_menelik
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      ras_menelik  
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    • October 17, 1989, at 5:04:15 pm (PDT) a magnitude 7.1 earthquake severely shook the greater San Francisco and Monterrey Bay areas.

      having survived a 7.1 I can not begin to imagine A 7.3

      The quake
      Magnitude 7.0
      Date-Time

      * Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 21:53:09 UTC
      * Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 04:53:09 PM at epicenter

      aftershock
      Magnitude 5.4
      Date-Time
      * Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 01:36:34 UTC
      * Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 08:36:34 PM at epicenter

    • 3 years ago
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