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ameriken

01-12-10, 07:13 PM

Haiti earthquake: thousands feared dead

Thousands of people are feared dead after a massive earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale hit the impoverished Caribbean island of Haiti.

Published: 12:54AM GMT 13 Jan 2010

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http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01557/haiti2_1557937c.jpg
This image obtained courtesy of the US Geological Survey (USGS) illustrates the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti Photo: AFP/GETTY

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01557/HaitiMap_1557931a.jpg Haiti, in red, is one half of an island in the Caribbean Photo: GOOGLE

Haiti's presidential palace and numerous other government buildings in the country's capital Port-au-Prince collapsed after the tremor. A hospital was also flattened, with reports that patients were buried under the rubble.

Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in the capital of Port-au-Prince, told US colleagues before phone service failed that "there must be thousands of people dead," according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Sara Fajardo.


"He reported that it was just total disaster and chaos, that there were clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince," Fajardo said from the group's offices in Maryland.

A journalist with Haitian television station Haitipal, interviewed by telephone from Port-au-Prince, told the station that public buildings across the capital had been destroyed.

"The presidential palace, the finance ministry, the ministry of public works, the ministry of communication and culture," were all affected by the quake, the reporter said, adding that the parliament building and a cathedral in the capital were also crumbling.

Don Blakeman, an analyst at the USGS in Golden, Colorado, said such a strong quake carried the potential for widespread damage.

"I think we are going to see substantial damage and casualties," he said.

The earthquake's size and proximity to populated Port-Au-Prince likely caused widespread casualties and structural damage, added quake expert Tom Jordan at the University of Southern California.

"It's going to be a real killer," he said.

President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with the people of Haiti and that the United States stands ready to help the island nation.

The earthquake is the strongest ever to hit Haiti.

Minor earthquakes are common in the Caribbean, but there has not been a major one in Haiti in 16 years.

The country of about 9 million people, most of them desperately poor, has struggled with political instability and 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.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/6977931/Haiti-earthquake-thousands-feared-dead.html

temarti

01-12-10, 07:23 PM

I believe the numbers are going to rise a lot by the morning

ameriken

01-12-10, 07:56 PM

I heard a news story earlier speaking with a missionary in Haiti and things didnt sound good. They dont have a 911 or any other kind of emergency system to help people in trouble.

Captain Kirk

01-12-10, 09:21 PM

Prayers up for the Hatian people. There is more than enough suffering there without this! God, Have merrcy on these poor souls.

temarti

01-12-10, 09:23 PM

From the pictures I have seen so far it is not good, prayers outbound

ameriken

01-12-10, 09:28 PM

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-01/51604049.jpg

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2010-01/51603762.jpg

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ameriken

01-12-10, 09:30 PM

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ameriken

01-12-10, 09:34 PM

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http://blogs.bet.com/news/newsyoushouldknow/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/haitianschoolcollapse.jpg

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Captain Kirk

01-12-10, 09:40 PM

Lord,

Give these people strength to find those who are burried alive and courage to continue on in the face of this great tragity.

Amen.

polizei

01-13-10, 08:51 AM

Man I wish I could go down and help. I hope not too many people are lost, I can't imagine how hard that would be on families.

Rocky C

01-13-10, 09:08 AM

Prayers Outbound !!!
Semper Fi,
Rocky

Rocky C

01-13-10, 02:15 PM

<CITE class=vcard>Update.........</CITE>
<CITE class=vcard></CITE>
<CITE class=vcard>By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer </CITE>– <ABBR class=recenttimedate title=2010-01-13T11:26:58-0800>39 mins ago</ABBR>
<ABBR class=recenttimedate title=2010-01-13T11:26:58-0800></ABBR>
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after a powerful earthquake flattened the president's palace, the cathedral, hospitals, schools, the main prison and whole neighborhoods. Officials feared hundreds of thousands may have perished but there was no firm count.

Death was everywhere in Port-au-Prince. Bodies of tiny children were piled next to schools. Corpses of women lay on the street with stunned expressions frozen on their faces as flies began to gather. Bodies of men were covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets.

President Rene Preval said he believes thousands were killed in Tuesday afternoon's magnitude-7.0 quake, and the scope of the destruction prompted other officials to give even higher estimates. Leading Sen. Youri Latortue told The Associated Press that 500,000 could be dead, although he acknowledged that nobody really knows.
"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," Preval told the Miami Herald. "There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them."

Even the main prison in the capital fell down, "and there are reports of escaped inmates," U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva.
The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was missing and the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince was dead.

"The cathedral, the archbishop's office, all the big churches, the seminaries have been reduced to rubble," Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the apostolic envoy to Haiti, told the Vatican news agency FIDES.
The parking lot of the Hotel Villa Creole was a triage center. People sat with injuries and growing infections by the side of rubble-strewn roads, hoping that doctors and aid would come.

The international Red Cross said a third of Haiti's 9 million people may need emergency aid and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge.
At first light Wednesday, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter evacuated four critically injured U.S. Embassy staff to the hospital on the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the military has been detaining suspected terrorists for the last seven years.

President Barack Obama promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort, adding that the U.S. commitment to its hemispheric neighbor will be unwavering.
"We have to be there for them in their hour of need," Obama said.

Other nations — from Iceland to Venezuela — said they would start sending in aid workers and rescue teams. Cuba said its existing field hospitals in Haiti had already treated hundreds of victims. The United Nations said Port-au-Prince's main airport was "fully operational" and open to relief flights.

The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson, is under way and expected to arrive off the coast of Haiti Thursday. Additional U.S. Navy ships are under way to Haiti, a statement from the U.S. Southern Command said.
Aftershocks continued to rattle the capital of 2 million people as women covered in dust clawed out of debris, wailing. Stunned people wandered the streets holding hands. Thousands gathered in public squares to sing hymns.
U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said it was possible that the death toll "will be in the thousands."

"Initial reports suggest a high number of casualties and, of course, widespread damage but I don't have any figure that I can give you with any reliability of what the number of casualties will be," Holmes said.

People pulled bodies from collapsed homes, covering them with sheets by the side of the road. Passers-by lifted the sheets to see if loved ones were underneath. Outside a crumbled building, the bodies of five children and three adults lay in a pile.

The prominent died along with the poor: the body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, 63, was found in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller of the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France. He told The Associated Press by telephone that fellow missionaries in Haiti had told him they found Miot's body.
Preval told the Herald that Haiti's Senate president was among those trapped alive inside the Parliament building. Much of the National Palace pancaked on itself.
The international Red Cross and other aid groups announced plans for major relief operations in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

Many will have to help their own staff as well as stricken Haitians. Taiwan said its embassy was destroyed and the ambassador hospitalized. Spain said its embassy was badly damaged.
Tens of thousands of people lost their homes as buildings that were flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions collapsed. Nobody offered an estimate of the dead, but the numbers were clearly enormous.

"The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Dr. Louis-Gerard Gilles.
Medical experts say disasters such as an earthquake generally do not lead to new outbreaks of infectious diseases, but they do tend to worsen existing health problems.

Haiti's quake refugees likely will face an increased risk of dengue fever, malaria and measles — problems that plagued the impoverished country before, said Kimberley Shoaf, associate director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters.
Some of the biggest immediate health threats include respiratory disease from inhaling dust from collapsed buildings and diarrhea from drinking contaminated water.
With hospitals and clinics severely damaged, Haiti will also face risks of secondary infections. People seeking medical attention for broken bones and other injuries may not be able to get the help they need and may develop complications.

Dead bodies piled on the streets typically don't pose a public health risk. But for a country wracked by violence, seeing the dead will exact a psychological toll.
An American aid worker was trapped for about 10 hours under the rubble of her mission house before she was rescued by her husband, who told CBS' "Early Show" that he drove 100 miles (160 kilometers) to Port-au-Prince to find her. Frank Thorp said he dug for more than an hour to free his wife, Jillian, and a co-worker, from under about a foot of concrete.

An estimated 40,000-45,000 Americans live in Haiti, and the U.S. Embassy had no confirmed reports of deaths among its citizens. All but one American employed by the embassy have been accounted for, State Department officials said.
Even relatively wealthy neighborhoods were devastated.

An AP videographer saw a wrecked hospital where people screamed for help in Petionville, a hillside district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians as well as the poor.
At a destroyed four-story apartment building, a girl of about 16 stood atop a car, trying to see inside while several men pulled at a foot sticking from rubble. She said her family was inside.

"A school near here collapsed totally," Petionville resident Ken Michel said after surveying the damage. "We don't know if there were any children inside." He said many seemingly sturdy homes nearby were split apart.
The U.N.'s 9,000 peacekeepers in Haiti, many of whom are from Brazil, were distracted from aid efforts by their own tragedy: Many spent the night hunting for survivors in the ruins of their headquarters.

"It would appear that everyone who was in the building, including my friend Hedi Annabi, the United Nations' secretary-general's special envoy, and everyone with him and around him, are dead," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on RTL radio.
But U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy would not confirm that Annabi was dead, saying he was among more than 100 people missing in its wrecked headquarters. He said only about 10 people had been pulled out, many of them badly injured. Fewer than five bodies had been removed, he said.
U.N. peacekeeping forces in Port-au-Prince are securing the airport, the port, main buildings and patrolling the streets, Le Roy said.

Brazil's army said at least 11 of its peacekeepers were killed, while Jordan's official news agency said three of its peacekeepers were killed. A state newspaper in China said eight Chinese peacekeepers were known dead and 10 were missing — though officials later said the information was not confirmed.

The quake struck at 4:53 p.m., and was centered 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of only 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.
Video obtained by the AP showed a huge dust cloud rising over Port-au-Prince shortly after the quake as buildings collapsed.

Most Haitians 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 buildings were shoddily built and unsafe normally.

The quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and in eastern Cuba, but no major damage was reported in either place.
With electricity out in many places and phone service erratic, it was nearly impossible for Haitian or foreign officials to get full details of the devastation.

"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official in Port-au-Prince. "The sky is just gray with dust."
Edwidge Danticat, an award-winning Haitian-American author was unable to contact relatives in Haiti. She sat with family and friends at her home in Miami, looking for news on the Internet and watching TV news reports. "You want to go there, but you just have to wait," she said. "Life is already so fragile in Haiti, and to have this on such a massive scale, it's unimaginable how the country will be able to recover from this."

Kegler300

01-13-10, 02:31 PM

I've read articles that are saying the death toll could be as high as 500,000 to 1,000,000 people. This is truly a devasting situation for the Haitian people and those of us who can afford to donate monetarily or otherwise, should do so.

Rocky C

01-13-10, 02:34 PM

Rocky C

01-13-10, 02:39 PM

Want to help victims of the earthquake in Haiti? Here's a list of organizations accepting donations:



InterAction, a coalition of U.S.-based international non-governmental organizations, has a list of agencies responding and how to donate to them. Find it here: www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti (http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti)

_ To donate $10 to the American Red Cross, text Haiti to 90999. The amount will be added to your next phone bill. The organization is also accepting donations through its International Response Fund, www.redcross.org (http://www.redcross.org/)

_ To donate $5 to Wyclef Jean's Haitian Yele charity, text 501501. The money will be added to your next phone bill.

_ To find out how to help the International Rescue Committee, visit www.theIRC.org (http://www.theirc.org/) or call toll free, 1-877-REFUGEE.

_ To donate through Oxfam's emergency appeal, visit <A href="http://www.oxfam.org.uk/">www.oxfam.org.uk (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/)

FistFu68

01-13-10, 03:56 PM

:usmc: The World hates the USA.but Who do they always call too Rescue their Azzez at Times such as These? :confused: :iwo:

Captain Kirk

01-13-10, 04:04 PM

That is incredable. That is over 10% of the popultation.

God have mercy!

Rocky C

01-13-10, 05:07 PM

Toll-free number for Americans seeking information about kin: 1-888-407-4747

ameriken

01-13-10, 05:10 PM

Rocky C

01-13-10, 05:43 PM

Thanks for posting that Rocky!!! :thumbup:

Thanks for Starting the Thread Ken.
We have 48 Rhode Islanders missing in Haiti and most are students and Aid workers.

For a small state like us it effects the whole community.

Semper Fi Brother,
Rocky

ameriken

01-13-10, 06:12 PM

Thanks for Starting the Thread Ken.
We have 48 Rhode Islanders missing in Haiti and most are students and Aid workers.

For a small state like us it effects the whole community.

Semper Fi Brother,
Rocky

Sorry to hear that Rocky, I hope you get some good word.

Here's another organization that is taking donations:

Catholic Relief Services http://crs.org/

NCOPOWER

01-13-10, 07:15 PM

We were told today by our XO that the Marine Corps is working quickly to get a MEU together. We have been ordered to get military passports ASAP. We might e going. Also my wife's work has called her and asked if she wants to go because she is an EMT. She would be going with feema.

Prayers are outbound!

BR34

01-13-10, 09:34 PM

NCOPOWER

01-13-10, 10:35 PM

I don't think FEMA does ork outside of the U.S.

Thats the info that I got from her boss. But she can't go so oh well. We found out shes pregnant.

Hotel4341

01-14-10, 09:08 AM

I don't think FEMA does ork outside of the U.S.

They probably usually don't... but given the severity of the situation and the amount of Americans that seem to want to help, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that they might donate their expertise and equipment.

BR34

01-14-10, 10:10 AM

Thats the info that I got from her boss. But she can't go so oh well. We found out shes pregnant.

Congrats!

BR34

01-14-10, 10:11 AM

They probably usually don't... but given the severity of the situation and the amount of Americans that seem to want to help, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that they might donate their expertise and equipment.

That must be sarcasm.

Hotel4341

01-14-10, 10:24 AM

That must be sarcasm.

The little they have could save thousands of lives, not to mention provide valuable real world training so if something like this occurs in the US they are more prepared. No, it was not sarcasm.

ameriken

01-14-10, 06:22 PM

Been following the news and the situation in Haiti is absolutely heartwrenching. Supplies have not reached anyone yet, dead bodies line the streets, they are lacking both food and water, families torn apart and not knowing where loved ones are. Very difficult to watch.

Captain Kirk

01-14-10, 06:55 PM

ameriken,

Imbeen folowing it too. Airport and airstrip all broken up, no fuel for the planes or machinery. it is a catistropic mess. God have mercy on them. Gid help the Marines who are going there to help. 2000 left today from Lejune.

ameriken

01-14-10, 07:08 PM

And so many supplies that are right there in Port Au Prince at the airport, yet the logistics of getting them distributed is all screwed up so the majority of food, water, medicine and supplies are not reaching the people. So close yet so far.

bpeterson

01-17-10, 09:40 AM

My heart really goes out for these people but at the same time you have the few making it very hard on the many. A merchant from a neighboring country took his own money, vending trucks and employes. His plans were to hand out the food and water in an orderly fashion for free and what happen was some Haitians shot him several time and took everything. This person was medivac'd out but died later.

That is very sad and I have heard several other stories like this. Man that really upsets me to think that once again the few that think they are so tough until you catch up with them and start to make them pay.

Rocky C

01-17-10, 10:11 AM

Sandra Bullock gives $1 million to Haiti relief

Jan. 16, 2010, 6:34 AM EST

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Sandra Bullock said Friday she donated $1 million toward Haitian earthquake relief, and Madonna announced she gave $250,000 toward the effort as celebrity aid continued to pour into the devestated country.
Bullock's contribution went to Doctors Without Borders' emergency operations in Port-Au-Prince, where three of the organization's existing facilities were damaged by the magnitude 7.0 quake.

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"I wanted to ensure that my donation would be used immediately to meet the needs of the Haitian people affected by this catastrophic event," said Bullock in a statement.

Madonna's gift was to Partners In Health, a longtime medical provider in Haiti.
"I urge all of my friends and fans around the world to join me collectively to match my contribution or give in any way you can," she said. "We must act now."

Earlier Friday, Not On Our Watch, an advocacy and grantmaking group founded by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and others, donated $1 million to Partners in Health.