Up to half a million people are feared dead in the devastating earthquake that shattered Haiti’s capital, and thousands more were left injured, homeless and reeling from the nightmare.
Global relief agencies raced to beleaguered Port-au-Prince yesterday to help the nation deal with the unimaginable destruction.
“Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” President Rene Preval said. “There are lots of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
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Vast sections of Port-au-Prince were reduced to rubble, leaving many of the 2 million residents homeless. Local authorities and aid groups were overwhelmed, leaving dazed and sobbing Haitians to dig through the crushed buildings with their bare hands to try to free loved ones.
Whole shantytowns had slid off the side of hilltops, and even the mightiest of buildings — including several hospitals, the presidential palace and the United Nations headquarters — had fallen like houses of cards. A prison also collapsed, freeing dangerous criminals.
“Most of Port-au-Prince is destroyed,” Haitian First Lady Elisabeth Debrosse Delatour told CNN.
Preval — whose private house was destroyed — was among those left homeless.
The death toll, so far, has been impossible to tally. Officials said they feared it could rise to a staggering 500,000, although they cautioned those figures were highly speculative.
“I don’t know,” Preval told CNN when asked how many were killed.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said he thought the total would “be in the range of hundreds of thousands dead.”
The terrifying 7.0-magnitude quake sent millions of residents into the streets.
“We have a lot of people here that need help. They need food. They need water,” said Vanessa Charlamagne, 27, who sat in a park with hundreds of others.
Corpses lined the streets, which were devoid of any signs of rescue work — no wailing sirens or heavy equipment.
“There are too many people who need help,” said Haitian Red Cross spokesman Pericles Jean-Baptiste. “We lack equipment. We lack body bags.”
The group Doctors Without Borders was working at two hospitals, and also set up tent clinics.
“What we are seeing is severe traumas, head wounds, crushed limbs, severe problems that cannot be dealt with the level of medical care we currently have available, with no infrastructure to really support it,” said Paul McPhun, the group’s operations manager.
Widespread power outages and downed phone lines left much of the capital in darkness.
Aftershocks continued to rattle the capital yesterday, leading to fears of further deaths. As many as 3 million of the country’s population of 9 million are estimated to have been affected, UN officials said.
International relief agencies scrambled to bring in aid and medical supplies, and but many Haitians said they had no idea how their already-impoverished country would recover from the worst earthquake to strike the region in 200 years.
“I don’t have work, I don’t have a future here,” farmer Antonio Bacevil told The Miami Herald as he fled across the border to the Dominican Republic, wearing nothing but ragged shorts and muddy shoes. “What you see is what I have. A lot of people are dead.”
Among those known to be killed was Haiti’s Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph Serge Miot, 63, whose body was found amid the ruins of his office.
Meanwhile, a 2-year-old New Zealand girl, Alyahna Sanson-Rejouis, was found alive underneath the body of her father in a collapsed hotel, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. The girl’s mom also survived, but two sisters were missing.
Five of 12 students from Florida’s Lynn University, who were studying in Haiti were found alive, but the others were unaccounted for.
As many as 150 members of the 9,000-person strong UN peacekeeping mission were unaccounted for — including the mission’s chief, Hedi Annabi, who was presumed dead.
Eleven Brazilian peacekeepers, 14 foreign soldiers and five international police officers — three from Jordan and one each from Chad and Argentina — were confirmed dead.
President Obama dispatched both military and civilian disaster-assistance teams.
“The people of Haiti will have the unwavering support of the United States,” he said. “We have to be there for them in their hour of need.”
The United State began planning a massive response.
The Navy said the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan had been dispatched to Haiti with a 2,000-member Marine unit to join other warships
A C-130 plane carrying members of a US military assessment team had already arrived.
The first rescue ship to arrive was the US Coast Guard cutter Forward, dispatched from the American base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to provide air-traffic control support for incoming relief flights. Although Port-au-Prince’s airport appeared undamaged, power outages left the tower inoperable.
The US State Department, which had advised Americans in Haiti to head for the airport, later told them to seek shelter and await further instruction.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cut short a trip to the Pacific, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates scrapped a trip to Australia to help out.
In Europe, aid groups were working to send sniffer dogs, rubble-clearing specialists, high-energy biscuits and tons of medical aid to Haiti.
Financial assistance flowed in from around the world — from small individual donations of just a few dollars, to a $100 million pledge from the World Bank.
Haitian born singer Wyclef Jean used Twitter to make appeals for aid.
Celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Paris Hilton, and Ben Stiller made donations to relief efforts, while the New York Yankees donated $500,000.