Thousands Feared Dead in Haiti earthquake
By JOSé DE CóRDOBA, DAVID LUHNOW AND JOHN LYONS
International aid groups scrambled to deliver food, medicine and other supplies to Haiti, where the strongest earthquake in more than two centuries has toppled buildings and raised fears that thousands are dead.
Haitian President Rene Preval described the devastation as “unimaginable,” in an interview with the Miami Herald. He called for quick international action.
“Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” Mr. Preval told The Herald. “There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.” He said Haiti’s Senate president was among those trapped alive inside the Parliament building. Much of the National Palace pancaked on itself.
Other Haitian officials gave much higher estimates of the death toll — though those estimates were based on the extent of the destruction rather than counts of the dead. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN: “I believe we are well over 100,000,” while leading senator Youri Latortue told the Associated Press that 500,000 could be dead. Both acknowledged they have no way of knowing the actual numbers.
U.S. ships and disaster-relief teams prepared to deploy to the Caribbean nation, as a range of governments, including the U.K., France and China, pledged relief, officials said. United Nation’s workers readied supply planes, and the International Red Cross mobilized emergency stocks kept in the region.
At Least 150 U.N. Workers Missing in Haiti
The partial collapse of communications and other infrastructure has hindered efforts to assess the damage of the magnitude-7 earthquake. But terrifying reports, including photos, of collapsed buildings and buried bodies have heightened concern that the destruction is extensive.
The quake struck just 10 miles southwest of the impoverished nation’s teeming capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Witnesses there reported seeing dead bodies in the rubble, and hearing cries for help.
Photographs depict a devastated city, broken into chunks of rubble and blanketed by the white dust of collapsing concrete and brick. Buildings, such as the national palace and the United Nation’s headquarters look as though they were stepped on by giants.
Haiti quake devastates capital (VDO)
Other photos show jarring human scenes, such as dust-covered men and women, some with horrific red gashes. In some, crowds with dazed and fearful expressions gather on the remains of a building. A woman buried to her chest in rubble pleads desperately; a blood-drenched man, also buried, is by her side.
“I saw dead bodies, people are screaming, they are on the street panicking, people are hurt,” Raphaelle Chenet, the administrator of Mercy and Sharing, a charity that takes care of 109 orphans, said in a telephone interview from the capital. “There are a lot of wounded, broken heads, broken arms.”
Joseph Serge Miot, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince, was found dead in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller of the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France.
“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.
The main prison in the capital fell down, and there are “reports of escaped inmates,” U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in Geneva.
A hospital in Port-au-Prince collapsed, along with dozens of other buildings, including one building in the presidential compound and one other government ministry building, according to Alice Blanchet, a special adviser to the Haitian government. Other landmark buildings in the capital, including the U.N. headquarters and the Hotel Montana, sustained heavy damage, witnesses said.
“I think the only good news was that it hit late and many of the people who would have been working in the buildings were on the street or at home,” she said.
The presence of thousands of United Nations’ peacekeepers in Haiti has widened the international scope of the disaster. The U.N. mission’s headquarters collapsed, and at least 150 workers remained missing. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters that efforts by satellite phone to reach the mission chief, Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, have so far failed. France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told French radio that Mr. Annabi had been killed.
“For the moment, a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for,” the U.N. said in a statement Tuesday.
“At this time of tragedy, I am very concerned for the people of Haiti and also for the many United Nations staff who serve there,” the secretary general said in a statement.
Brazil, which has more than 1,000 troops stationed in Haiti, confirmed 11 soldiers were killed. Eight Chinese peacekeepers died and others are missing, China’s state-run media reported. Jordan’s official news agency said at least three of its soldiers were killed.
The three health-care facilities run by Doctors Without Borders in Port-au-Prince were either collapsed or unusable, the humanitarian group said Wednesday. The group is treating patients in temporary outdoor facilities, but “the best we can offer … is first-aid care and stabilization,” said Paul McPhun, the group’s project manager for Haiti. Many patients have crushed limbs and other severe injuries that “cannot be dealt with” in the temporary facilities, he said.
In Port-au-Prince, many houses built on steep ravines collapsed, Ms. Chenet and other witnesses said. Ms. Chenet said she heard a few explosions, which she believed to be gas explosions. The orphans in the two institutions run by Mercy and Sharing weren’t hurt, she said.
President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with the people of Haiti.
“Clearly, there’s going to be serious loss of life in this,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley told reporters.
1.8 million people live within the area where the magnitude-7 quake was most intense, John Bellini, a geophysicist at the USGS, told The Wall Street Journal. “With a strong and shallow earthquake like this in such a populated area, it could really cause substantial damage,” he said.
Nightfall and the chaos after the quake made it too early to estimate the extent of the casualties. Disaster specialists said various mathematical models for an earthquake of such magnitude in Haiti predict that as many as 4,000 people could have been killed.
The Greek Ambassador to Venezuela, Efstathios Daras, who is also representing Greece in Haiti said: “We fear major loss of life, maybe in the thousands or tens of thousands.” He described reports of victims trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings.
“Survivors are using their hands to help get trapped people out. There are fears of big aftershocks which could make the situation even worse. There is huge damage to the infrastructure. We can’t get through anymore. All phone lines are down.”
Francis Ghesquiere, lead disaster risk management specialist at the World Bank, said the toll would be exacerbated by the lack of zoning, building codes, and emergency preparedness in a country with a notoriously weak central government. Immediate recovery efforts could be hampered by the same issues until foreign assistance arrives.
Security problems could also arise if victims and others, seeking to take advantage of the chaos, resort to looting in the scramble for supplies. Such events have followed previous disasters in Haiti and now, despite the presence of a U.N. peacekeeping force, “the security situation could be a big problem,” warned Mr. Ghesquiere.
The earthquake is a frustrating set-back for a long-awaited economic recovery that had appeared to show the first signs of taking root in one of the hemisphere’s poorest nations.
Long beset by crime, corruption and political turmoil, the nation’s economy lost what little industry it had after an early-1990s coup prompted an international trade embargo. Though the embargo ended years ago, Haiti has struggled to find new investors willing to risk the volatile, and often dangerous, operating environment.
Some of that appeared to be changing. A multi-nation peacekeeping force, led for years by Brazil, brought a measure of stability, while U.S. legislation designed to help the nation revive a manufacturing sector cut tariffs on imports of textiles and other goods. With a minimum wage only recently raised to $3 a day, the country seemed ripe to attract investment.
Indeed, a wave of clothing manufacturers set up shop in the last two years, creating new jobs and lifting economic growth. One sign of the optimism: Three new hotels opened in the last year, including a luxury boutique catering to businessmen and expatriate Haitians home on vacation. An investment convention set up by former U.S. President Bill Clinton last year attracted hundreds of companies.
While it’s too early to quantify the impact of the quake, the recovery was a fragile one even before the temblor hit. The nation still depends heavily on foreign aid and cash sent home from big communities of Haitians who fled the economic chaos to seek opportunity in cities like Miami.
“People were beginning to feel that if Haiti was going to have a chance, this was it,” said Johanna Mendelson Forman, who follows Haiti at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. “I hope now people will be more determined to do something.”
The quake was the most powerful to hit Haiti since at least 1770, according to USGS records, Mr. Bellini said. “This isn’t normally an earthquake-prone place,” he said.
The quake was reportedly felt as far away as Venezuela.
Latin America is no stranger to deadly earthquakes. In 1972, a 6.2-magnitude quake hit Managua, Nicaragua, killing between 3,000 and 7,000 people. In 1976, Guatemala was racked by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake that killed 23,000. And in 1985, an 8.1-magnitude earthquake battered Mexico City, killing at least 10,000 and perhaps many thousands more.
OnTuesday, within minutes of the original tremor, two aftershocks rolled through the area, with magnitudes of 5.9 and 5.5.
The country has also been shaken by political instability. In 2004, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a fiery former Catholic priest, was overthrown by a rebellion of former soldiers and flown into exile in South Africa.
In 2008, the country was shaken as thousands took to the streets to protest the high prices of food. Eight in ten Haitians live in poverty, according to the CIA World Factbook.
An 11,000-strong force of U.N. peacekeepers, led by elements of the Brazilian army, have been in Haiti since Mr. Aristide’s overthrow to help maintain law and order. Aside from natural disasters, the island, which is on an important drug smuggling route from South America, has had to deal with the violence and corruption engendered by drug trafficking.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere subcommittee, said: “This is the worst possible time for a natural disaster in Haiti, a country which is still recovering from the devastating storms of just over a year ago.”
The American Red Cross said it will send $500,000 in emergency funding, and dispatch local responders to assess the situation. “As with most earthquakes, we expect to see immediate needs for food, water, temporary shelter, medical services and emotional support,” the organization said Tuesday evening.
Americans with roots in the country issued pleas for help. “If you have any heart at all…please…get up and do something. Make a donation,” said Jozy Altidore, a member of the U.S. national soccer team whose parents were both born in Haiti, in a Twitter feed.
Haiti has had a turbulent history alternating between dictatorship, civil war and coups since black slaves defeated Napoleonic troops to declare its independence in 1804, becoming the world’s first black republic.
The country was largely isolated during the 19th century by European powers that didn’t want to encourage other slave rebellions. Beset by chaos and civil war, Haiti was occupied by the U.S., which sent Marines to run the country from 1915 to 1934. From 1957 to 1986, the island was ruled first by dictator François Duvalier who was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude, known as “Baby Doc,” who was overthrown in 1986.
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