PORT-AU-PRINCE: A major earthquake rocked Haiti, killing possibly tens of thousands of people as it toppled the presidential palace and hillside shanties alike and left the Caribbean nation appealing for international help.
Haiti’s President Rene Preval called the damage “unimaginable” and told The Miami Herald he believed thousands were dead. He described stepping over dead bodies and hearing the cries of those trapped inside the collapsed Parliament, where the Senate president was among those pinned under the wreckage.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told Reuters that he believed there could be “in the range of thousands of dead.” Soon after, Bellerive told CNN he believed well over 100,000 people could have died.
A five-story UN headquarters building was also brought down by Tuesday’s 7.0 magnitude quake, the most powerful to hit Haiti in more than 200 years according to the US Geological Survey.
Reuters television footage from the capital, Port-au-Prince, showed scenes of chaos on the streets with people sobbing and appearing dazed amid the rubble. The presidential palace lay in ruins, its domes fallen on top of flattened walls. The quake’s epicenter was only 16 km from Port-au-Prince. About four million people live in the city and surrounding area. Aftershocks as powerful as 5.9 rattled the city throughout the night and on Wednesday. Reports on casualties and damage were slow to emerge due to communication problems.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he feared everyone in the UN building was killed when it collapsed.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the missing included the chief of the UN mission in Haiti, Hedi Annabi, but he could not confirm reports Annabi had died. He said some 100-150 people were in the building when the quake struck. Several bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the UN headquarters, UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said.
He told reporters fewer than 10 people, “some dead, some alive,” had been pulled from the rubble but many remained underneath.
Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, was also killed in the quake.
Brazilian Gen. Carlos Barcellos said 11 Brazilian members of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti were killed and a large number of Brazilian soldiers were missing.
“I am appealing to the world, especially the United States, to do what they did for us back in 2008 when four hurricanes hit Haiti,” Raymond Alcide Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to Washington, said in a CNN interview. “If a building like the palace, which is very solid, collapsed, then the devastation is going to be worse because a lot of the buildings are not up to code around Port-au-Prince,” he told ABC’s Good Morning America. “They’re flimsy little abodes hanging on the sides of hills.”
Sara Fajardo, a spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services, told the Los Angeles Times its representative in Haiti said the death toll could be higher.
The Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) aid organization said it was treating about 600 people in its hospitals in Haiti. It also was sending reinforcements to the disaster zone, as was the International Red Cross.
US President Barack Obama said his “thoughts and prayers” were with the people of Haiti and pledged immediate aid.
In Geneva, UN officials said they expected the world body would issue an international emergency appeal for funds and other assistance for Haiti in the next few days, once needs on the ground had been assessed.
Germany was sending one million euros in immediate aid, said Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, adding “I’m shocked by the dimensions of the earthquake disaster in Haiti.”
The Inter-American Development Bank said it would provide $200,000 in immediate aid. The World Bank, which said its local offices were destroyed but most staff were safe, planned to send a team to help assess damage and plan a recovery.
