Major earthquake in Haiti destroys city of Port-au-Prince

On Tuesday morning, a major earthquake struck the capital of Haiti. The magnitude of the earthquake was over 7.(extremely devastating) Panic stricken people filled the streets as offices, hotels, houses and shops collapsed. People were screaming "Jesus, Jesus" and running in all directions. The gleaming white presidential palace lay in ruins, its domes fallen on top of flattened walls. Bloodied and dazed survivors gathered in the open and corpses were pinned by debris. Numerous powerful aftershocks rattled Port-au-Prince into the night. The United Nations said a large number of its personnel in Haiti were unaccounted for after a five-story building at the headquarters of the U.N. mission collapsed. "The whole city is in darkness. You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go," said Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity.

"There are people running, crying, screaming." In the hillside neighborhood of Petionville, Domersant said he saw no police or rescue vehicles. "People are trying to dig victims out with flashlights," he said. "I think hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement." Witnesses said they saw homes and shanties built on hillsides come tumbling down as the earth shook. "The car was bouncing off the ground," Domersant said. U.N. officials said normal communications had been cut off and the only way to talk with people on the ground was via satellite phone. Roads were blocked by rubble. U.S. President Barack Obama said his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti and pledged immediate aid. The United States would provide military and civilian disaster assistance to the Caribbean country, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Hawaii. Clinton's husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who is the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, also pledged assistance. The Inter-American Development Bank said it would provide $200,000 in immediate emergency aid. The World Bank, which said its local offices were destroyed but that most staff were accounted for, plans to send a team to help Haiti assess damage and plan a recovery. U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said the main U.N. building in Port-au-Prince had collapsed. "We don't know how many people were in the building," he told reporters. Le Roy's deputy Edmond Mulet said 200 to 250 people work in the building during normal hours. Since the earthquake struck after 5 p.m. local time -- after working hours -- it was not clear how many people would have been inside. There were more houses destroyed than standing in Delmas Road, a major thoroughfare in Port-au-Prince, another Food for the Poor employee said. The Hotel Montana, where many foreigners stay, was also damaged. "Within a minute of the quake ... soil, dust and smoke rose up over the city, a blanket that completely covered the city and obscured it for about 12 minutes," Mike Godfrey, who works for USAID, told CNN.

Sources:

Reuters

NY Times

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