Fierce Quake Devastates Haitian Capital
By SIMON ROMERO and MARC LACEY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: January 12, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/americas/13haiti.html?th&emc=th
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — A fierce earthquake struck Haiti late Tuesday afternoon, causing a crowded hospital to collapse, leveling countless shantytown dwellings and bringing even more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest and most disaster-prone.
The earthquake, the worst in the region in more than 200 years, left the country in a shambles. As night fell in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, fires burned near the shoreline downtown, but otherwise the city fell into darkness. The electricity was out, telephones were not working and relief workers struggled to make their way through streets blocked by rubble.
In the chaos, it was not possible for officials to determine how many people had been killed and injured, but they warned that the casualties could be substantial.
The physical toll was easier to assess. The headquarters of the United Nations mission was seriously damaged, the United Nations said in a statement, and many employees were missing. Part of the national palace had collapsed, The Associated Press reported.
A hospital collapsed in Pétionville, a hillside district in Port-au-Prince that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, a videographer for The Associated Press said. And an American government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.
Tequila Minsky, a photographer based in New York who was in Port-au-Prince, said that a wall at the front of the Hotel Oloffson had fallen, killing a passer-by. A number of nearby buildings had crumbled, trapping people, she said, and a Unibank bank building was badly damaged. People were screaming.
“It was general mayhem,” Ms. Minksy said.
The earthquake, with a magnitude estimated at 7.0, struck just before 5 p.m. about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the United States Geological Survey said. Many aftershocks followed and more were expected, said David Wald, a Geological Survey seismologist.
“The main issue here will probably be shaking,” he said, “and this is an area that is particularly vulnerable in terms of construction practice, and with a high population density. There could be a high number of casualties.”
Oxfam, an antipoverty group, said that Kristie van de Wetering, a former employee based in Port-au-Prince, had described houses in rubble everywhere.
“There is a blanket of dust rising from the valley south of the capital,” agency officials said Ms. van de Wetering had told them. “We can hear people calling for help from every corner. The aftershocks are ongoing and making people very nervous.”
The earthquake could be felt across the border in the Dominican Republic, on the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola. High-rise buildings in the capital, Santo Domingo, shook and sent people streaming down stairways into the streets, fearing that the tremor could intensify.
Haiti sits on a large fault that has caused catastrophic quakes in the past, but this one was described as among the most powerful to hit the region. With many poor residents living in tin-roof shacks that sit precariously on steep ravines and with much of the construction in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in the country of questionable quality, the expectation was that the quake caused major damage to buildings and significant loss of life.
“Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken,” Henry Bahn, an official of the United States Department of Agriculture who was visiting Haiti, told The Associated Press. “The sky is just gray with dust.”
Haiti’s many man-made woes — its dire poverty, political infighting and proclivity for insurrection — have been exacerbated repeatedly by natural disasters. At the end of 2008, four hurricanes flooded whole towns, knocked out bridges and left a destitute population in even more desperate conditions.
The United States and other countries have devoted significant humanitarian support to Haiti, financing a large United Nations peacekeeping mission that has recently reported major gains in controlling crime. International aid has also supported an array of organizations aimed at raising the country’s dismal health and education levels.
Emergency meetings were being held in Washington, and President Obama issued a statement saying that administration officials were closely monitoring the situation.
“We stand ready to assist the people of Haiti,” Mr. Obama said.
The Caribbean is not usually considered a seismic danger zone, but earthquakes have struck here in the past.
“There’s a history of large, devastating earthquakes,” said Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, “but they’re separated by hundreds of years.”
Most of Haiti lies on the Gonave microplate, a sliver of the earth’s crust between the much larger North American plate to the north and the Caribbean plate to the south. The earthquake on Tuesday occurred when what appears to be part of the southern fault zone broke and slid.
The fault is similar in structure to the San Andreas fault that slices through California, Dr. Mann said.
Such earthquakes, which are called strike-slip, tend to be shallow and produce violent shaking at the surface.
“They can be very devastating, especially when there are cities nearby,” Dr. Mann said.
Victor Tsai, a seismologist at the National Earthquake Information Center of the United States Geological Survey, said the depth of Tuesday’s earthquake was only about six miles and the quake was a 9 on a 1-to-10 scale that measures ground shaking. “We expect substantial damage from this event,” he said.
In the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami, customers began streaming into the Louis Market shortly after news of the earthquake hit the airwaves. They were buying $5 phone cards in a desperate attempt to reach relatives in Haiti.
“Everyone who walks in here is crazy, worried, depressed,” said Myrlande Cherenfant, 20.
At the Notre Dame de Haiti Roman Catholic church, a handful of parishioners in red-cushioned seats pressed redial on their phones over and over. Some said that they had been able to get through immediately after the earthquake.
“I was able to talk to a priest in Haiti,” the Rev. Reginald Jean-Mary said. “The only word I heard was ‘catastrophe’ and then it cut off.”
He said that in a later call he was told that the cathedral in Port-au-Prince had been destroyed and that other churches had been damaged.
Jean-Robert Lafortune, executive director of the Miami-based Haitian American Grassroots Coalition, said that Haiti had endured “a cycle of natural disasters and man-made disasters, and this is one more big catastrophe.”
“We are in trauma,” he said. “We have loved ones there and many of them will be victims. We’re calling and calling, but there’s nothing on the other end.”
Simon Romero reported from Santo Domingo, and Marc Lacey from Mexico City. Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City, Damien Cave from Miami, and Kenneth Chang and Liz Robbins from New York.
Haiti Lies in Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead
By SIMON ROMERO
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: January 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14haiti.html?th&emc=th
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Survivors strained desperately on Wednesday against the chunks of concrete that buried this city along with thousands of its residents, rich and poor, from shantytowns to the presidential palace, in the devastating earthquake that struck late Tuesday afternoon.
Calling the death toll “unimaginable” as he surveyed the wreckage, Haiti’s president, René Préval, said he had no idea where he would sleep. Schools, hospitals and a prison collapsed. Sixteen United Nations peacekeepers were killed and at least 140 United Nations workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hédi Annabi. The city’s archbishop, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, was feared dead.
And the poor who define this nation squatted in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble.
Limbs protruded from disintegrated concrete, muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings — many of them poorly constructed in the first place — as Haiti struggled to grasp the unknown toll from its worst earthquake in more than 200 years.
In the midst of the chaos, no one was able to offer an estimate of the number of people who had been killed or injured, though there was widespread concern that there were likely to be thousands of casualties.
“Please save my baby!” Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside the St.-Esprit Hospital in the city. Her child, a girl about 4 years old, writhed in pain in the hospital’s chaotic courtyard, near where a handful of corpses lay under white blankets. “There is no one, nothing, no medicines, no explanations for why my daughter is going to die.”
Governments and aid agencies from Beijing to Grand Rapids began marshaling supplies and staffs to send here, though the obstacles proved frustrating just one day after the powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit. Power and phone service were out. Flights were severely limited at Port-au-Prince’s main airport, telecommunications were barely functioning, operations at the port were shut down and most of the medical facilities had been severely damaged, if not leveled.
A Red Cross field team of officials from several nations had to spend Wednesday night in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to gather its staff before taking the six-hour drive in the morning across the border to the earthquake zone.
“We were on the plane here with a couple of different agencies, and they all are having similar challenges of access,” Colin Chaperon, a field director for the American Red Cross, said in a telephone interview. “There is a wealth of resources out there, and everybody has the good will to go in and support the Haitian Red Cross.”
The quake struck just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, ravaging the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroying some of its most important cultural symbols.
“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”
President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.
Mr. Obama said that United States aid agencies were moving swiftly to get help to Haiti and that search-and-rescue teams were en route. He described the reports of destruction as “truly heart-wrenching,” made more cruel given Haiti’s long-troubled circumstances. Mr. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what the nation needed. But he urged Americans to go to the White House’s Web site, www.whitehouse.gov, to find ways to donate money.
“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the morning in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side.
Aid agencies said they would open their storehouses of food and water in Haiti, and the World Food Program was flying in nearly 100 tons of ready-to-eat meals and high-energy biscuits from El Salvador. The United Nations said it was freeing up $10 million in emergency relief money, the European Union pledged $4.4 million and groups like Doctors Without Borders were setting up clinics in tents and open-air triage centers to treat the injured.
Supplies began filtering in from the Dominican Republic as charter flights were restarted between Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.
Some aid groups with offices in Port-au-Prince were also busy searching for their own dead and missing.
Sixteen members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti were killed and as many as 100 other United Nations employees were missing after the collapse of the mission’s headquarters in the Christopher Hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
Forty or more other United Nations employees were missing at a sprawling compound occupied by United Nations agencies. Ten additional employees had been in a villa nearby.
It was one of the deadliest single days for United Nations employees. The head of the group’s Haitian mission, Mr. Annabi, a Tunisian, and his deputy were among the missing, said Alain Le Roy, the United Nations peacekeeping chief.
The Brazilian Army said 11 of its soldiers had been killed. During a driving tour of the capital on Wednesday, Bernice Robertson, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she saw at least 30 bodies, most covered with plastic bags or sheets. She also witnessed heroic recovery efforts. “There are people digging with their hands, searching for people in the rubble,” she said in a video interview via Skype. “There was unimaginable destruction.”
Paul McPhun, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, described scenes of chaos.
When staff members tried to travel by car, “they were mobbed by crowds of people,” Mr. McPhun said. “They just want help, and anybody with a car is better off than they are.”
Contaminated drinking water is a longstanding problem in Haiti, causing high rates of illness that put many people in the hospital. Providing sanitation and clean water is one of the top priorities for aid organizations.
More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled Haiti through Tuesday night and into early Wednesday, according to Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,” she said.
David Wald, a seismologist with the Geological Survey, said that an earthquake of this strength had not struck Haiti in more than 200 years, a fact apparently based on contemporaneous accounts. The most powerful one to strike the country in recent years measured 6.7 magnitude in 1984.
Bob Poff, a Salvation Army official, described in a written account posted on the Salvation Army’s Web site how he had loaded injured victims — “older, scared, bleeding and terrified” — into the back of his truck and set off in search of help.
In two hours, he managed to travel less than a mile, he said.
The account described how Mr. Poff and hundreds of neighbors spent Tuesday night outside in a playground. Every tremor sent ripples of fear through the survivors, providing “another reminder that we are not yet finished with this calamity,” he wrote.
He continued, “And when it comes, all of the people cry out and the children are terrified.”
Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail message to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. S O S. S O S ... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”
Photos from Haiti on Wednesday showed a hillside scraped nearly bare of its houses, which had tumbled into the ravine below.
Simon Romero reported from Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Reporting was contributed by Marc Lacey and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City, Ginger Thompson and Brian Knowlton from Washington, Neil MacFarquhar, Denise Grady and Liz Robbins from New York, and Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro.
U.S. Mobilizes to Send Assistance to Haiti
By HELENE COOPER and LIZ ROBBINS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: January 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14prexy.html?th&emc=th
WASHINGTON — President Obama, facing the first large-scale humanitarian crisis of his presidency, moved quickly to send help to Haiti, pledging Wednesday that the Haitians and their devastated island nation would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.
Within hours of Mr. Obama being informed of the quake in Haiti on Tuesday, United States officials were plotting a response that included ships, transport planes, helicopters and thousands of Marines. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton decided Wednesday night to cancel the rest of her Pacific trip and return to Washington.
Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of the United States Southern Command, said that one of the Navy’s large amphibious ships would probably be sent to Haiti, with a Marine expeditionary unit aboard, and that other American military forces were on alert, including a brigade of 3,500 troops. He said the Pentagon was “seriously looking” at sending thousands of Marines to help the disaster effort.
The Navy aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was deployed from Norfolk, Va.; military commanders said it should arrive in two days. In addition, White House officials said the military was looking into sending the Southern Command’s hospital ship, the Comfort, in light of reports that most of Haiti’s medical facilities were severely damaged if not destroyed. The Coast Guard also sent four cutters.
As the United States mobilized, other governments and aid agencies around the world began marshaling supplies and manpower, and overwhelmed rescue workers in Haiti scrambled to set up makeshift clinics. Medical workers from Doctors Without Borders, which had 800 people in Haiti before the quake, said they were mobbed everywhere they went by people who had suffered severe traumas and crushed limbs, and by others begging for help in rescuing trapped relatives.
France said that it would send three military transport planes, including one from nearby Fort-de-France, Martinique, with aid supplies, and that 100 troops based in the French West Indies would be sent, according to TF1, a French television network. Britain and Germany were sending governmental assessment teams, and Germany said it would make available 1.5 million euros, or about $2.2 million, for emergency assistance.
On Wednesday, relief organizations developed aid plans from their headquarters outside of Haiti and quickly raised millions of dollars through social networking sites and donations by cellphone. But they were still struggling to get workers and supplies into Haiti, where operations at the capital’s port were shut down and runways at the main airport were open only to limited traffic because the control tower had collapsed.
“We’re looking at private charter options, looking at getting people through the Dominican Republic,” said Paul McPhun, a director of the emergency management team for Doctors Without Borders. “We need to get people in, and get people fast. There’s not a shortage of getting people to go, but it’s how to get them there.”
Mr. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what Haiti needed. But he urged Americans to dig into their pockets and to go to www.whitehouse.gov to learn ways to donate money.
“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday, speaking in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side.
He described the reports of thousands buried under the rubble in the capital, Port-au-Prince, as “truly heart-wrenching,” a tragedy made more cruel by Haiti’s desperate poverty.
Robyn Fieser, the regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services, said, “All they heard last night was chanting and praying,” describing reports from some of her organization’s relief workers who were in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday night. “They did not hear any emergency vehicles or emergency efforts at all. All they saw was people doing rescue work on their own, with their bare hands.”
White House officials were clearly conscious that Mr. Obama’s response to the first major humanitarian disaster of his presidency would be closely watched. President George W. Bush learned that lesson the hard way, when his initial response to the December 2004 tsunami in Asia that killed 226,000 people was derided as paltry, and a year after that when his White House fumbled its response to Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Obama canceled a trip to Lanham, Md., scheduled for Wednesday afternoon so he could make telephone calls to discuss the relief effort with staff members and foreign diplomats, White House aides said.
Mr. Obama was informed about the quake at 5:52 p.m. Tuesday by Denis McDonough, his national security chief of staff; he told aides that he wanted the United States to move “fast and aggressively,” one White House official said. By 6:22 p.m. the White House had issued a statement from the president that the United States was “closely monitoring the situation” and stood “ready to assist the people of Haiti.”
The Coast Guard cutter Forward was at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba when the earthquake hit on Tuesday, causing the 270-foot ship to rock back and forth even though it was more than 200 miles from the epicenter. The Forward arrived in Port-au-Prince early Wednesday morning, the first American military ship on the scene and the only large vessel in the harbor, Diane W. Durham, commander of the Forward, said in a telephone interview.
Commander Durham described extraordinary devastation, with collapsed buildings reaching from the port into the hills above, and said that Haitian officials had told her that half of the 80 Haitian coast guard staff members stationed at the port were killed in the earthquake.
The Department of Homeland Security said it was halting the deportations of Haitians back to the island “for the time being.” Refugee and immigration rights groups said the United States should grant temporary protective status that would allow Haitians who are now in the United States to stay here.
Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Liz Robbins from New York. Eric Lipton contributed reporting from Washington.
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