Re: Earthquake Magnitude 7.0 - HAITI REGION - Ambassador to US says "likely catastrophic"
Haiti earthquake: Bodies piled up on the streets as disaster leaves 'thousands' dead
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By
David Gardner and
Liz Hazelton
Last updated at 3:11 PM on 13th January 2010
- Red Cross fears around three million people affected by 7.2 quake
- Up to 250 UN staff believed dead after headquarters collapse
- Charities launch emergency appeals to help stricken survivors
- Presidential palace crumbles, hospital collapses and houses swept away
- Quake felt in Jamaica, Cuba and Dominican Republic
Bloodstained bodies are piled high in the streets of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince today amid fears that thousands have died in a catastrophic earthquake.
Rescuers have been forced to dig through rubble with their bare hands to free trapped survivors as the Red Cross said up to three million people may have been affected.
British and international aid agencies are rushing to assist today as the full horror of the disaster began to emerge.
It is still unclear how many have been killed in the earthquake, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, but aid agencies fear thousands are dead.
Helpless: An injured child receives medical treatment in Port-au-Prince
Chaos: Residents sleep in the streets of Port-au-Prince which has been hit by more than 30 aftershocks
Among the fatalities were up to 250 UN staff, including the Head of Mission, who were working inside its five-storey headquarters when it collapsed.
Around 200 people are also feared dead after a hotel crumbled to dust, the National Palace is in ruins and a major hospital also destroyed.
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The destruction is said to be staggering, even in an impoverished nation accustomed to tragedy and disaster.
Eyewitnesses said gravely injured Haitians were crying out from the rubble, pleading for doctors as night fell.
Digging with their bare hands: A woman receives assistance in a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince
Collapse: Sections of the Haiti National Palace was destroyed in the massive earthquake
With the country in chaos and facing still more damage from a series of 30 aftershocks, their cries went mostly unheard.
The quake, the most powerful in the region for 200 years, was centred about ten miles west of the Haitian capital, a city of two million people, many of them living in flimsy shanty slums.
HOW TO DONATE
To give to the Red Cross Haiti appeal visit www.redcross.org.uk/haitiearthquake or call 08450 535353
To donate through Christian Aid go to www.christianaid.org.uk/haiti-appeal
To give to the Oxfam appeal call 0300 200 1999, visit www.oxfam.org.uk or call in at a
local Oxfam shop
It struck at 4.53pm yesterday and was followed by as many as 30 aftershocks, one of them as strong as 5.9 on the Richter scale, a sizeable earthquake in its own right.
The centre was also relatively shallow, less than ten miles below ground, raising the risk of damage.
Survivors held hands and sung hymns as they waited for help to come. But many people spent the night fighting for their lives.
'I can hear very distressed people…a lot of distress, people wailing, trying to find loved ones trapped under the rubble,’ said Ian Rodgers, of Save the Children, who is in Port-au-Prince.
Shock: Stunned Haitians walk past damaged building in Port-au-Prince in the aftermath of the quake
Desperate: Two women crouch in the rubble hours after the earthquake ripped through Haiti
Emergency aid: Two men help a woman freed from rubble in Haiti
‘I couldn't even stand up, that's how bad it was,’ said Valerie Moliere, 15. ‘There's a lot of people in the street everywhere. Some are wounded.’
DEVASTATING BUT PREDICTED
The major earthquake which devastated Haiti came as no surprise to many geologists.
In 2008, five scientists authored a paper warning that a fault line on the south side of the island posed a 'major seismic hazard.'
Last night's devastating earthquake ripped through the unstable region, the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault zone.
Paul Mann, one of the paper's authors and a senior research scientist at the University of Texas' Institute for Geophysics, said: 'We were concerned about it.
'The problem with these kinds of strikes is that they can remain quiescent - dormant - for hundreds of years. So it's hard to predict when they'll occur.'
The island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Domican Republic, is caught betwen two teutonic plates, making it particularly suspceptibile to earthquakes.
Although lesser known, the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault is similar to the San Andreas fault in California, responsible for some of America's most devastating earthquakes.
The last major earthquake in Hispaniola was in 1946, measured 8.0 and left 20,000 people homeless.
Geologists said the last similar size event in the Port-au-Prince region was in 1770.
‘I just heard that right next to my neighbourhood there's this pharmacy and this school that broke down and many people died,’ she added.
‘Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken,’ said Henry Bahn, a US Department of Agriculture official visiting Port-au-Prince. ‘The sky is just gray with dust.’
Mr 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.’
Jocelyn Valcin, a resident of Boynton Beach, Florida 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’ said Mr Valcin. ‘The whole outside deteriorated.’
US 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.
Aid agencies were today scrambling to co-ordinate a relief effort for the poorest nation in the world.
Gordon Brown confirmed Britain was sending help and said he was 'deeply saddened and worried' by the scale of the earthquake.'
Experts from the Department for International Development (DFID) are already on the way to the stricken region.
Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, told the Commons around six million people live in the affected region with one million in the area worst hit.
'By any measure, this is a terrible tragedy,' he said. 'We have mobilisted a UK Fire and Rescue Service search and rescue team of 64 people with dogs and heavy rescue equipment.
A house begins to crumble in the earthquake which has also destroyed government buildings in the capital
NEW BLOW FOR COUNTRY MIRED IN MISERY
The earthquake that plunged Haiti into darkness is another blow to a nation that has seen more than its share of misery.
Much of Haiti's nine million population is impoverished and the disaster comes after years of political instability.
The country has suffered a number of recent disasters, including hurricanes and storms in 2008.
In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60% of the buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.
The earthquake yesterday was felt in the Dominican Republic - but no major damage was reported there.
Houses also shook in eastern Cuba but there were also no reports of significant damage.
'The team and their ten tonnes of equipment are at present assembling at Gatwick and are ready to deploy as soon as the airport reopens following heavy snow.
'We are urgently looking at all options to ensure the search and rescue team can deploy as quickly as possible, including the possiblity of an RAF flight.'
In Washington, President Obama has also pledged to send aid. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton added: ‘We will be providing both civilian and military disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.’
A number of emergency appeals have already been launched.
Save The Children has released £50,000 from its funds while the British Red Cross has allocated £200,000.
Gareth Owen, emergencies director at Save the Children, which has around 60 staff in Haiti, said: 'We are very concerned about the high likelihood of a significant loss of life because Port-au-Prince is a very densely populated city and the earthquake epicentre was very close to it.
'Initial reports from our people there from the immediate vicinity of where they are indicate that it looks very bad indeed.'
Both Oxfam and Christian Aid have also launched emergency appeals.
Haitian musician Wyclef Jean urged his fans to donate to earthquake relief efforts, saying he had received text messages from his homeland reporting that many people had died. ‘We must think ahead for the aftershock, the people will need food, medicine, shelter, etc,' Mr Jean said on his website.
Death and suffering: Early images out of Port-au-Prince tell a harrowing story
Close call: Survivors count their blessings after the quake struck
Most of Haiti's nine 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.
The earthquake epicentre was ten miles outside Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital
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