Luciole Press Blog: Haiti earthquake: Number of dead could be more than 100,000

Haiti earthquake: Number of dead could be more than 100,000

Two injured children sit by the side of the road the day after the earthquake struck Haiti

Haiti earthquake: Number of dead could be more than 100,000 as bloodstained bodies pile up in the streets

By Liz Hazelton and David Gardner
13th January 2010

Red Cross fears around three million people affected by 7.2 quake
Up to 100 UN staff including believed dead after headquarters collapse
Charities launch emergency appeals to help stricken survivors
Presidential palace crumbles, hospital collapses and houses swept away
Britain sends emergency team as Obama vows 'unwavering'
support

The Prime Minister of Haiti tonight said the death toll for the catastrophic earthquake could top 100,000 as the full scale of the disaster began to emerge. Jean-Max Bellerive said it was still impossible to tell how many had been killed as the capital Port-au-Prince was in such chaos. 'I hope that it is not true, because I hope the people had time to get out,' he said. 'Because we have so many people on the streets right now, we don't know exactly where they have been living. 'But so many, so many buildings, so many neighbourhoods totally destroyed, and some neighbourhoods we don't even see people, so I don't know where those people are.'

Buildings were destroyed in the devastating quake. Here, a car is seen covered in rubble in downtown Haiti

Mr Bellerive's estimate of fatalities appeared relatively modest alongside that of leading senator Youri Latortue who claimed as many as 500,000 could be dead. Both admit they have no way of knowing. President René Préval, meanwhile, described the scene on the streets of Port-au-Prince as 'unimaginable.' Bloodstained bodies are piled high in the streets and rescuers have been forced to dig through the rubble with their bare hands to free trapped survivors.

British Search and Rescue teams prepare to leave Gatwick airport to provide assistance to relief and rescue teams in Haiti

Search and rescue officials from the United States Agency for International Development board a plane from the U.S. to Haiti

'Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,' he said. The Red Cross fears up to three million people could be affected. 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. Among the fatalities were up to 100 UN staff, including Hedi Annabi, the Secretary General's special envoy, who were working inside its five-storey headquarters when it collapsed. The Roman Catholic Arcbishop of Port-au-Prince Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot also died. His body was found in the ruins of the archdiocese office.

An injured man is rescued by UN search and rescue officials

The man smiles with relief as he is rescued in Port-au-Prince

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. 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. With the country in chaos and facing still more damage from a series of 30 aftershocks, their cries went mostly unheard.

Collapse: Much of the Haiti National Palace was destroyed in the massive earthquake

People walk in front of the badly damaged presidential palace

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

To contribute to CARE International UK's appeal go to www.careinternational.org.uk

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. 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.

Survivors: A boy and a woman wounded and covered in dust are unable to comprehend what has happened

First aid: Residents carry an injured man through the streets of Port-au-Prince

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 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.’ ‘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.

A woman receives assistance in a collapsed bulding in Port-au-Prince

Digging with their bare hands: A woman receives assistance in a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince

Haitians pass a covered body as they take in the devastation in Port-au-Prince

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 mobilised a UK Fire and Rescue Service search and rescue team of 64 people with dogs and heavy rescue equipment. '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.'

Helpless: An injured child receives medical treatment in Port-au-Prince

Shock: Stunned Haitians walk past damaged building in Port-au-Prince in the aftermath of the quake

In Washington, President Obama vowed 'unwavering support' to help Haiti recover. 'We are just now beginning to learn the extent of the devastation, but the reports and images that we've seen of collapsed hospitals, crumbled homes and men and women carrying their injured neighbors through the streets are truly heart-wrenching,' he said. 'I have directed my administration to respond with a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives.' 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.

Desperate: Two women crouch in the rubble hours after the earthquake ripped through Haiti

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.

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. He later added: 'I cannot stress enough what a human disaster this is, and idle hands will only make this tragedy worse. The over 2 million people in Port-au-Prince face catastrophe alone. We must act now.' Hollywood couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie also pledged their support by releasing a statement which read: 'We are devastated by the news from Haiti. 'We will work closely with our good friend Wyclef Jean to support the humanitarian efforts on the island and help those who have been injured and left without homes and shelter.'

The earthquake epicentre was ten miles outside Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital

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.

Article: HERE

Thousands feared dead in Haiti quake; many trapped

By Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer
37 mins ago

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."

___

Associated Press contributors to this story: videographer Pierre Richard Luxama in Port-au-Prince; and writers David Koop and Olga R. Rodriguez in Mexico City; David McFadden and Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Matthew Lee and Julie Pace in Washington; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Tamara Lush in Tampa, Fla.; and Jennifer Kay and Christine Armario in Miami.

Article: HERE

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10/23/2010 9:11 AM Love Haiti wrote:
We've passed away an ominous n worst moment.
In fact the EARTH Quake took place since many days. But still we are not totally free from its grasp.
I think at this moment HAITI really needs help to rebuild it. I support it with whole heartily. N i also wanna mention a personality
Charlito Baker (born June 3, 1955) who can supply the best support and leadership
Thank you.
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Haiti earthquake: Number of dead could be more than 100,000

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