Breaking News: Haiti hit by a 7.0 quake

[Broomstick]

Not much more than that, but it's not like Haiti needs more problems. Quake is centered only about 15 km from the capital, Port-au-Prince at around 5 pm local time. Reports are sparse, but apparently rubble is blocking streets and making exit from some buildings difficult if not impossible.

Needless to say, Haiti's building standards aren't wonderful, and surely many buildings were not anywhere near able to withstand such a quake.

((Tsunami warning revoked, so i edited the title -- LadyT))

[TrailerParkJawa]

Yahoo news is reporting a hospital has collasped. Not unexpected in any part of the world for an earthquake at 7.0 but all the more likely in a regions with dodgey construction. Hopefully casulties will be light.

[Broomstick]

From CNN

A major earthquake struck southern Haiti on Tuesday, knocking down buildings and inflicting a catastrophe on the impoverished Caribbean nation, its ambassador to the United States said.

"The only thing I can do now is pray and hope for the best," the ambassador, Raymond Joseph, told CNN.

The magnitude 7.0 quake struck about 10 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince shortly before 5 p.m. Joseph said he had little information about the extent of damage from the quake, but one government official -- the only one he was able to reach -- told him houses had crumbled "on the right side of the street and the left side of the street."

"He said it is a catastrophe of major proportions," Joseph said.

A hospital collapsed from the quake, The Associated Press reported.

Frank Williams, the Haitian director of the relief agency World Vision International, said the quake left people "pretty much screaming" all around Port-au-Prince. He said the agency's building shook for about 35 seconds, "and portions of things on the building fell off."

"None of our staff were injured, but lots of walls are falling down," Williams said. "Many of our staff have tried to leave, but were unsuccessful because the walls from buildings and private residences are falling into the streets, so that it has pretty much blocked significantly most of the traffic."

The quake was centered about 6 miles (10 kilometers) underground, according to the USGS. A magnitude 5.9 aftershock followed soon afterward, about 30 miles further west, followed by a 5.5 aftershock closer to the location of the first quake.

"There is a kind of wail as people are very frightened by it," Williams said of the aftershocks. "But most people are out in the streets and just kind of looking up."

A tsunami watch was posted for Haiti and parts of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, but there was no indication that a tsunami had been generated. Historical data suggested a destructive, widespread tsunami was not a threat, the USGS reported.

The quake could be felt strongly in the eastern Cuban city of Santiago, about 250 miles west of Port-au-Prince.

"It was very strong. It lasted for almost a minute," said Marlon Romaguera, who runs a bed-and-breakfast there.

You just know this is going to be bad...

At the best of times even Port-au-Prince infrastructure is marginal. Haiti has so few resources. I'd like to see the Americans run to the rescue ('cause we seem to do that) but given the past history between Haiti and the US that poses potential problems. Certainly I'd like to see a lot of countries lend some help, because Haiti will certainly need some.

Casualties, unfortunately, will almost certainly be high.

[CaptainChewbacca]

From the Times

A powerful earthquake of 7.0 magnitude rocked Haiti just before 5 p.m. Eastern time, 10 miles southwest from the highly populated capital of Port-au-Prince, according to the United States Geological Survey, causing widespread damage and panic with the potential for a high number of casualties in the impoverished Caribbean country.

There were two aftershocks — of 5.5 and 5.9 magnitude — that followed in the last 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 highly population density. There could be a high number of casualties.”

The city has about 2 million people, according to National Geographic.

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

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Couldn't happen at a worse time for Haiti. At least the fact that it happened on land on the edge of a bay means there won't be widespread tsunamis. The worst of it is, it hit RIGHT near the capital, which is where any relief or communications would come through. I'm expecting at least 30,000 dead

[Broomstick]

Damage was also done to their main airport, which may well delay rapid deployment of aid.

There are also reports of a collapsed hotel.

I'm assuming it shook the whole island. Wonder if there is any damage in the Domican republic. The tremors were reputedly felt as far away as Cuba.

[Kodiak]

CNN is commentating that the international airport still seems to be operating. The ambassador from Haiti to the US said that with reported serious damage to the presidential palace and the treasury building we can only imagine what has happened to the Shanty Towns. I think 30k dead is a fair estimate, but the horror is we won't even have a handle on rescue efforts for at least another few days.

[Broomstick]

I would be pleasantly shocked if the death toll is only 30,000. The government buildings are some of the better built ones, and if they've have collapses in those, well, the places people live and do business....

It will be very ugly.

[FSTargetDrone]

L.A. Times:

People wail from the rubble across Port-au-Prince, where a hospital reportedly collapsed and bodies lie in the streets. One aid official estimates 'there must be thousands of people dead.'

By Tracy Wilkinson

6:05 PM PST, January 12, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

A mighty earthquake rocked the tiny, impoverished island nation of Haiti today, collapsing a hospital, the presidential palace and other buildings and triggering what one diplomat called a "catastrophe."

As night fell on the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and other towns, reports of extensive destruction were trickling out. Tsunami alerts were issued for Cuba, the Bahamas and much of the Caribbean.

The quake, one of the most powerful ever in the region -- measuring a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and centered about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million -- had a shallow depth of just five miles. It struck at 4:53 p.m., followed by several strong aftershocks.

All of that augured vast damage and overwhelming casualties. Electricity was out tonight through the darkened capital, phone lines were down, and the airport was shut. Screams for help seeped from felled buildings, and chaos reigned.

"I can hear very distressed people . . . a lot of distress, people wailing, trying to find loved ones trapped under the rubble," Ian Rodgers, with Save the Children in Port-au-Prince, told CNN by telephone.

In Washington, President Obama pledged to help the crippled country.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in remarks before a speech in Hawaii, said the U.S. was assessing the situation and "is offering our full assistance to Haiti and to others in the region."

"We will be providing both civilian and military disaster relief and humanitarian assistance," Clinton said. "And our prayers are with the people who have suffered, their families and their loved ones."

Philip J. Crowley, the State Department's senior spokesman, said U.S. officials were meeting to plan "significant" assistance to Haiti.

He said U.S. Embassy personnel have reported widespread damage, including collapsed buildings and walls, and bodies lying in the streets. The presidential palace, a graceful white French colonial structure visited by President Clinton in 1994, has sustained heavy damage, Crowley said.

U.S. officials plan to send teams to assess Haiti's needs, but they first needed to determine whether airport runways were able to receive cargo planes carrying aid, Crowley said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees American military operations in the Caribbean and South America, said officials are assessing what assistance or aid might be needed.

"We are monitoring the situation and staying in close contact with the State Department," said Jose Ruiz, a spokesman for the command.

The Associated Press said its reporters saw a hospital collapse in the wealthy suburb of Petionville that overlooks the capital.

A spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services said the group's representative in Haiti, Karel Zelenka, described "total disaster and chaos" before the telephone line went dead. Zelenka told colleagues that the Haitian capital was covered in dust.

"He estimates there must be thousands of people dead," the spokeswoman, Sara Fajardo, said in an interview from the group's office in Maryland.

Fajardo said the group has stockpiles of food and other goods to serve 5,000 families but that aid workers are concerned that relief efforts could be impaired by poor road conditions and lack of security.

"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 until the atmospheric conditions dissipated the dust," Mike Godfrey, who works as a contractor for USAID, told CNN from Port-au-Prince.

"I think it is really a catastrophe of major proportions," said Haiti's ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph.

People communicating by Twitter said that while they felt the quake in the Haitian city of Cap-Haitien, in the north, there was little damage.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. Already battered by storms, military coups and gang violence, much of Haiti is a hodgepodge of slums, poor construction and people living on the edge.

Well, at least it looks like some aid is starting to be organized.

[Broomstick]

Pictures are starting to get out on the Internet:



With power out, phones out, communications are not flowing freely, but I'm sure we'll see more shortly.

[Broomstick]

The BBC is reporting the quake was a 7.3, not just a 7

Le Monde is reporting the center of Port-au-Prince is destroyed. The article is here for those who can read French. It's rather short, and reportedly via an injured doctor.

[Broomstick]

This was Haiti's Presidential Palace yesterday:


This is what it looks like now:


Keep in mind, this is the seat of Haitian government. It's almost assuredly better built than most buildings in Port-au-Prince, and better maintained.

Fortunately, Haiti doesn't usually build over 3 or 4 stories, and in many places the buildings are single story - skyscrapers that collapse might have wrought even worse devastation. But that is no consolation to those dead or trapped in the rubble.

[FSTargetDrone]

I haven't seen a lot of the more recent news coverage tonight, mostly just the same pictures being shown again and again on CNN but the first thing that stuck out to me is the apparent near-total lack of rebar.

If there was any used in the construction of the Palace, well, I can't see from the above picture of course.

[FSTargetDrone]

So I'm sitting here working late and the AP app on my iPhone pops up its headline viewer that "The Haitian capital has largely been destroyed..."

I didn't think to take a screenshot. I wish I had, for posterity, of sorts.

I mean, when was the last time we have ever seen a headline like that? Yes, Haiti is not a large country, but still, when a country's capital is "largely destroyed," that's something for the history books.

Latest AP story:

Jan 13, 12:31 AM EST

Major quake hits Haiti; many casualties expected

By JONATHAN M. KATZ
Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- The Haitian capital has largely been destroyed in the most powerful earthquake to hit the country in more than 200 years. Journalists from The Associated Press describe severe and widespread casualties after a tour of streets where blood and bodies can be seen.

The damage is staggering even in a country accustomed to tragedy and disaster. AP reporters say the National Palace is a crumbled ruin and tens of thousands of people are homeless.

Many gravely injured people sit in the street, pleading for doctors many hours after the quake. In public squares thousands of people are singing hymns and holding hands.

The 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, leaving large numbers of people unaccounted for.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - 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, U.N. peacekeeper headquarters and other buildings. U.S. 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 4:53 p.m. that they still couldn't account for a large number of U.N. 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 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.

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 U.N. peacekeeping chief in New York, said late Tuesday that the headquarters of the 9,000-member Haiti peacekeeping mission and other U.N. installations were seriously damaged.

"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."

Felix Augustin, Haiti's consul general in New York, said a portion of the National Palace had disintegrated.

"Buildings collapsed all over the place," he said. "We have lives that are destroyed. ... It will take at least two or three days for people to know what's going on."

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, as well as many poor people. Elsewhere in the capital, a U.S. government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.

Kenson Calixte of Boston spoke to an uncle and cousin in Port-au-Prince shortly after the earthquake by phone. He could hear screaming in the background as his relatives described the frantic scene in the streets. His uncle told him that a small hotel near their home had collapsed, with people inside.

"They told me it was total chaos, a lot of devastation," he said.

Haiti's ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph, said from his Washington office that he spoke to President Rene Preval's chief of staff, Fritz Longchamp, just after the quake hit. He said Longchamp told him that "buildings were crumbling right and left" near the National Palace. The envoy said he had not been able to get back in contact with officials.

With phones down, some of the only 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 few reports emerging from Haiti made clear the country suffered extensive damage.

"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

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.," Jean said on his Web site.

Eva DeHart at the humanitarian organization For Haiti With Love in Palm Harbor, Fla., said colleagues at the group's base in Cap Haitien reported that town was spared damage. But they heard from people in Port-au-Prince that many government buildings were damaged. "That's going to have a major effect on coordinating aid," she said.

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 succeeding 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 AP writers David Koop 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.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its so bad over there they can't even count or estimate the dead.

[Bounty]

BBC News reports there is still no power or communications. A few people have managed to phone in reports and it's harrowing to listen to. Many UN personnel are apparently still missing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8455629.stm

Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity, told Reuters that overnight the capital was in total darkness.

"You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go. There are people running, crying, screaming.

"People are trying to dig victims out with flashlights. I think hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement."

Earlier, bodies white with dust could be seen piled on the back of a pick-up truck as vehicles tried to ferry the injured to hospital.

[cosmicalstorm]

Fucking christ, that place can't catch a break ever.

[Broomstick]

Yes, Haiti has seemingly been cursed for centuries.

Yet every Haitian I've met, who has been a friend or co-worker or neighbor, has been a really nice, generous person.

Apparently, despite the collapse of the buildings, most of Haiti's government survives. It seems most government workers had already left for the day. The president and first lady have asked for a hospital ship "off the coast of Port-au-Prince, just in the same way that the United States had helped us in 2008 after four hurricanes hit Haiti in three weeks." (What was that about Haiti never catching a break....?)

There have been at least 28 aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 or greater overnight.

The US Embassy reports the airport is in good enough condition for flight operations. Of course, there is still no power so I expect operations will be VFR - that means fewer flights than if there were powered facilities, and no operations after dark, but it will be the fastest way to get aid into the country. The US, Venezuela, and the UN already say they have airplanes ready to take off with food, water, medical supplies, searchers, and medical personnel.

The World Food Program says they already have emergency food stores warehoused in the city, but fear looting by desperate people.

Medecins Sans Frontieres reports severe damage to their facilities in Haiti, along with injuries to personnel, patients, and a large influx of wounded. In addition to the collapse of at least one hospital, the wounded are overwhelming what little medical capacity is left operational.

There is video of people digging survivors out of collapsed buildings with their bare hands and pieces of rubble, groups of people trying to help and comfort the injured and the grief-stricken even though the ones doing all that have also lost their homes, are sometimes injured themselves, and can't find their loved ones, either. That seems to be part of the Haitian character, to try to pull whatever can be salvaged out of wreckage. There was a man on the news today describing how people spent 10 hours breaking through a concrete slab to rescue his wife alive. I expect we'll be hearing about heros and survivors as well as tragedy. The focus seems to be very much on saving the living. There are dead lying in the street, but people are working frantically to save whoever they can.

[Broomstick]

There are reports the airport tower was destroyed in the quake. That will further slow flight operations, but there are standard procedures for flying into and out of airports without air traffic control. As long as the runways are safe aid will be able to get in and out of the city. Some countries are flying aid into the Dominican Republic, which, although on the same island and which also felt the quake, apparently suffered little damage. The Dominican Republic is asking for aid on behalf of its neighbor and is apparently more than willing to lend its airports and assistance.

President Obama says that as of 10 am Eastern Time the US military has overflown the island and completed damage assessments. He says that US aid will arrive by this afternoon.

Canada and the UK also have aid ready to be flown in. Spain, Germany, and the EU have all pledged aid. In the Caribbean, the Bahamas and Jamaica are also lending aid.

I suspect coordinating the amount of aid may require some finesse, given the volume of help already on the way and the devastated infrastructure in Haiti - clearly the world is recognizing Haiti will need considerable help of all sorts.

[Lonestar]

USNI is reporting that the Comfort is on the way over. I bet it's probably the first of many BGBs.

[FSTargetDrone]

Comfort is based on the east coast, how long will it take to arrive?

[Broomstick]

Probably a couple of days. Depends on where on the East Coast it starts from and whether or not it needs to stock up on anything before leaving.

Meanwhile:

100 members of the 150 members of the UN delegation to Haiti are trapped in the collapsed headquarters. Some are still alive, 15 confirmed dead. Apparently some of the trapped people are able to communicate via cellphone.

China has announced it is sending a rescue team.

Medicins Sans Frontieres a reports all three of their facilities are "inoperable" and their staff mostly injured, but still trying to deal with the wounded who show up looking for help.

The National Penitentiary collapsed, allowing inmates to escape. This is cause for concern.

Apparently there are some Dominican Republic military at the Port-au-Prince airport for security purposes.

The Haitian prime minister believes over 100,000 are dead.

[Kodiak]

This is the newest from CNN

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Haiti's earthquake, the prime minister told CNN Wednesday.

Haitian authorities said the powerful quake destroyed most of the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

A top envoy called it a "major catastrophe."

Haiti's first lady, Elisabeth Debrosse Delatour, reported that "most of Port-au-Prince is destroyed" and that many government buildings had collapsed, Haiti's ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, told CNN Wednesday morning. Delatour said President René Préval was all right, Joseph reported.

Rescue crews were racing Wednesday morning to fully assess the damage in the teeming hillside city, where toppled buildings killed and injured an untold number of people and trapped others in the rubble.

The U.S. State Department has been told to expect "serious loss of life," spokesman P.J. Crowley said, though precise casualty estimates were not immediately available.

About 3 million people -- one-third of Haiti's population -- were affected by the quake, the Red Cross estimated.

Authorities braced for civil disturbances.

Edmond Mulet, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, told CNN that the National Penitentiary collapsed and the inmates escaped, prompting worries about looting by escapees.

President Obama pledged Wednesday that the U.S. government would lead "a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives" in Haiti after the earthquake.

"For a country and a people who are no strangers to hardship and suffering, this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible," he said.

The president noted that "military overflights have assessed the damage" from the earthquake and that civilian disaster assistance team were beginning to arrive in Haiti.

Obama said U.S. relief efforts are currently focused on a quick accounting of U.S. Embassy personnel and their families in Port-au-Prince, as well as other American citizens living and working in Haiti. He urged Americans trying to locate family members in Haiti to telephone the State Department at 888-407-4747.

The main airport in Haiti appears to be operable. U.S. Embassy staff at the airport said the tower and the lights are working, Crowley said Wednesday.

The quake ripped apart buildings, shearing huge slabs of concrete off structures in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Many buildings that remained standing were left open to the elements, pictures from the scene showed.

First rescuers on the scene were often local people trying to help dig people out of the rubble by hand or to comfort injured survivors.

Pictures from Haiti showed concrete buildings that had fallen onto themselves, broken and flattened. People in the streets were dusty from the concrete and in some cases bloody from their injuries.

"One woman, I could only see her head and the rest of her body was trapped under a block wall," said Jonathan de la Durantaye, who drove through Port-au-Prince after the quake. "I think she was dead. She had blood coming out of her eyes and nose and ears."

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It could be felt strongly in eastern Cuba, more than 200 miles away.

Many of the concrete-block homes in Port-au-Prince are built "helter-skelter, all over the place," Joseph said. The earthquake damaged buildings as grand as the National Palace, pancaking scores of structures, trapping people inside those buildings, and knocking down phone and power lines.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Timothy M. Carney told CNN that Port-au-Prince was particularly at risk because it grew rapidly from a population of about 250,000 in the mid-1950s to more than 2 million today, all with little oversight.

More than 100 employees of the United Nations' mission in Haiti were unaccounted for Wednesday after the earthquake, U.N. officials said.

Among the missing were the chief of the U.N. mission in Haiti and the agency's deputy special representative, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in New York.

The destruction included the U.N. peacekeeper compound, a five-story building where about 250 people work every day.

Three Jordanian peacekeepers died and 21 were injured, according to Jordan's state-run Petra News Agency. An Argentine member of the peacekeeping team also is confirmed dead, the Argentine military said

Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, died in the quake, according to the official Vatican newspaper.

None of the three aid centers run by Doctors without Borders in Haiti is operable following the earthquake, the group said Wednesday.

The group is focusing on re-establishing surgical capacity so it can deal with the crushed limbs and head wounds it is seeing, said Paul McPhun, an emergency management expert for Doctors without Borders.

CNN's Anderson Cooper, viewing Port-au-Prince from a helicopter, called the sight of the destroyed buildings in the quake-devastated city "incredibly shocking" and "eerie."

He said many people are "just kind of standing around on the streets, not really sure what to do or where to go, and for many, there is nowhere to go."

The disaster is the latest to befall the country of about 9 million people, roughly the size of Maryland, which is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and among the poorest in the world.

Hurricane Gordon killed more than 1,000 people in 1994, while Hurricane Georges killed more than 400 and destroyed most of the country's crops in 1998. And in 2004, Hurricane Jeanne killed more than 3,000 people even as it passed north of Haiti, with most of the deaths in the northwestern city of Gonaives.

Gonaives was hit heavily again in 2008, when four tropical systems passed through.

With people cutting down trees for fuel and to clear land for agriculture, the mountainous countryside has been heavily deforested. That has led to severe erosion and left Haitians vulnerable to massive landslides when heavy rains fall.

Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. Buildings shook in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, during the earthquake, but no major damage was reported there, according to The New York Times.

Massive overpopulation - check
Poorest nation in western hemisphere - check
Almost Zero building codes and infrastructure - check
Experts expecting an earthquake for some time - check

It's as though someone said - "What's the worst possible place for an earthquake to strike for maximum loss of human life". I don't know how they can recover anytime soon. Just burying hundreds of thousands (if that is the number) would be daunting.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I haven't seen a lot of the more recent news coverage tonight, mostly just the same pictures being shown again and again on CNN but the first thing that stuck out to me is the apparent near-total lack of rebar.

If there was any used in the construction of the Palace, well, I can't see from the above picture of course.

Uh, that palace was built in the 18th century, and probably actually has never been subjected to a major earthquake before, seeing as the last one was 250 years ago in that region, which means that the palace, which was probably built after 1760, has never experienced one before. It was certainly built to the best standards of the 18th century... But that's it. On the other hand it's entirely possible nothing has been built to "best standards" since, either. This is a terrible, terrible shame, though. The Haitian people are so proud and resilient and I've never seen any of them fail to make successful lives for themselves in the states which show what could be done in Haiti if the cycle were just broken.

I'm rather tempted to contact my ex even though we haven't spoken even casually in months/years and make sure all his extended family is okay, for that matter. But he probably doesn't know himself. At least pretty much all of my other Haitian friend's family lives in New York. Bleh, it's such a pity Grant didn't ram through their application for Statehood when they actually wanted it after the Civil War. We could use more hardworking people.

And yeah, casualty-wise, we're going to be lucky if there's only 30,000 dead, to be blunt. The government assessment is probably correct; the actual fatalities will be in hundreds of thousands. This has all the recipes of being like the Haiyuan and Tangshan earthquakes: Extremely dense population in extremely tightly cramped quarters throughout the island, with no building standards whatsoever.

Edit: Ugh, nevermind, the Presidential Palace has already been rebuild twice due to getting blown up by revolts/gunpowder being stored in the basement, so it was built in 1918 and should include at least some rebar since the designer was a graduate of the Ecole d'Architecture in Paris. Yeah, the shantytowns are truly screwed.

[FSTargetDrone]

Probably a couple of days. Depends on where on the East Coast it starts from and whether or not it needs to stock up on anything before leaving.

Yeah, the ship is based in Baltimore and from what I've read it can be deployed within 5 days' notice, but perhaps sooner.

Richard Morse, the American musician/hotel manager in Haiti mentioned above has kept up his Twtter stream, somehow (you don't have to have a Twitter account to read it):

all my guests slept in the driveway last night..people came up from the streets thinking they were bodies.. neighbors helping neighbors

* * * * *

Multi storied buildings are flattened..Cathedral, St Trinity, St Gerard, Sacre Coeur are destroyed or partly destroyed

* * * * *

Castel Haiti is down..was 8 stories high

Latest AP story:

Jan 13, 12:52 PM EST

Thousands feared dead in Haiti quake; many trapped

By JONATHAN M. KATZ

Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Haitians are piling bodies along the devastated streets of their capital after a powerful earthquake flattened the president's palace and the main prison, the cathedral, hospitals, schools and thousands of homes. Untold numbers are still trapped.

President Rene Preval says he believes thousands of people are dead even as other officials give much higher estimates - though they were based on the extent of the destruction rather than firm counts of the dead.

His prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, tells CNN: "I believe we are well over 100,000," while leading senator Youri Latortue tells The Associated Press that 500,000 could be dead. Both admit they have no way of knowing.

The magnitude-7 quake struck Tuesday afternoon.

[Kodiak]

As if things couldn't get any worse

UN: Haitian capital's main jail collapsed in quake

The United Nations says the main prison in Haiti's battered capital of Port-au-Prince collapsed in the massive earthquake.

The Associated Press
GENEVA —

The United Nations says the main prison in Haiti's battered capital of Port-au-Prince collapsed in the massive earthquake.

A U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman says the U.N. has received reports of escaped inmates.

Spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs says she had no further details.

Isn't "Haitian Prison" a phrase that all hardened criminals fear? There could be problems if former military revolutionaries are now loose. It's starting to sound like something out of a movie.

edited to fix tags