I offer the following with every single deserved word:
"Major quake hits Haiti; many casualties expected" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer | January 12, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti --The largest earthquake ever recorded in the area rocked Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital where people screamed for help and damaging other buildings. An aid official described "total disaster and chaos."
Communications were widely disrupted, making it impossible to get a clear picture of damage as powerful aftershocks shook a desperately poor country where many buildings are flimsy. Electricity was out in some places.
Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in the capital of Port-au-Prince, told U.S. colleagues before phone service failed that "there must be thousands of people dead," according to a spokeswoman for the aid group, Sara Fajardo.
"He reported that it was just total disaster and chaos, that there were clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince," Fajardo said from the group's offices in Maryland.
The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It had a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometers). It was the largest quake recorded in the area and the first major one since a magnitude-6.7 temblor in 1984, USGS analyst Dale Grant said.
I saw the map and the epicenter; I'm surprised it didn't tear totally separate the the two pieces.
An Associated Press videographer saw the wrecked hospital in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, as well as many poor people. Elsewhere in the capital, a U.S. government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.
Oh, dear God.
The temblor appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other, quake expert Tom Jordan at the University of Southern California. The earthquake's size and proximity to populated Port-Au-Prince likely caused widespread casualties and structural damage, added. "It's going to be a real killer," he said. "Whenever something like this happens, you just hope for the best," he said. "The damage caused by this earthquake is not going to be pretty."
Minor earthquakes are common in the Caribbean, but there has not been a major one in Haiti in 16 years. The country of about 9 million people, most of them desperately poor, has struggled with political instability and has no real construction standards.
Thanks to us and our CIA!
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. The 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. Haiti, however, was another story. "Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official visiting Port-au-Prince. "The sky is just gray with dust." Bahn said he was walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake....
In the community of Thomassin, just outside Port-au-Prince, Alain Denis said neighbors told him the only road to the capital had been cut but that phones were all dead so it was hard to determine the extent of the damage. "At this point, everything is a rumor," he said. "It's dark. It's nighttime."
Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N.'s special envoy for Haiti, issued a statement saying his office would do whatever he could to help the nation recover....
--more--""High toll feared in Haiti quake; Capital battered; many homeless" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press | January 13, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The most powerful earthquake in Haiti’s history devastated much of its capital yesterday, destroying part of the National Palace, leveling shantytowns, and littering the streets with bodies and rubble.
Calling the damage widespread and catastrophic, officials said it would be days before they could tally the dead and determine the extent of the devastation. Tens of thousands of people are homeless. Communication to much of the island nation was severed.
Gravely injured people sat in the street, pleading for doctors long into the night. With almost no emergency services, they had few options. In public squares, thousands of people held hands, weeping and singing hymns....
Oh, HOW DO THEY DO IT?
How do such a POOR and IMPOVERISHED PEOPLE, so traumatized, COME TOGETHER and BOND better than AmeriKans!!!!
United Nations officials said they could not account for a large number of UN personnel....
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.
The Diocese of Norwich, Conn., said at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were believed to be trapped in rubble. Alain Le Roy, the UN peacekeeping chief in New York, said late last night that the headquarters of the 9,000-member Haiti peacekeeping mission and other UN installations were seriously damaged.
Felix Augustin, Haiti’s consul general in New York, said a portion of the National Palace had disintegrated. “Buildings collapsed all over the place,’’ he said. “We have lives that are destroyed. . . . It will take at least two or three days for people to know what’s going on.’’
Kenson Calixte of Boston spoke to an uncle and cousin in Port-au-Prince shortly after the earthquake by phone. He could hear screaming in the background as his relatives described the frantic scene in the streets. His uncle told him that a small hotel near their home had collapsed, with people inside....
With phones down, some of the only communication came from social media such as Twitter....
They can't -- for once -- stop the promotions?
The earthquake was centered about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 5 miles, the US Geological Survey said. USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti.
Holy crap!
In 1946, a magnitude-8.1 quake struck the Dominican Republic and also shook Haiti, producing a tsunami that killed 1,790 people.
"Thousands in Mass. fear for kin" by John M. Guilfoil and Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | January 13, 2010
In the dark hours since a massive earthquake shattered Haiti yesterday, the festive air has turned to dread at La Difference Restaurant on Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester.
First, the wide-screen television that beams shows directly from the Caribbean nation to the dining room faded to gray. On the radio, an urgent voice speaking in French told of buildings reduced to rubble after a devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit 10 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Patrons and workers tried frantically to call family and friends in Haiti, but no one answered.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,’’ said Sanders Nicholas, a 23-year-old college student whose family lives near the National Palace. “I just want to know what’s going on.’’
Haitians across Massachusetts huddled anxiously last night around televisions and radios and trolled the Internet, desperate for news of loved ones. Haitians are one of the largest immigrant groups in the state, with more than 43,000 clustered in Boston and other cities, including Malden, Brockton, and Somerville.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti at this time of terrible tragedy,’’ Governor Deval Patrick said in a statement last night. “We stand strong with the Haitian community here in Massachusetts and will be reaching out over the course of the coming days to offer any assistance we can to them and their families.’’
For once, I won't bash him.
Many Haitian-Americans stay in close touch with their relatives in Haiti, and Massachusetts residents send more than $10 million to Haiti every year to help pay for food, schooling, medicine, and other costs.
“We are all calling each other, trying to find out who can get through,’’ said Pierre P. Joas, who hosts a Haitian television show in the area and whose elderly mother is in Haiti visiting relatives. “It’s a panic situation.’’
His cousin, Jules Dorce, 42, of Mansfield, has a sister in Haiti.
“I spoke to my nephew in France who tried to reach my sister, but was not able,’’ Dorce said. “I have a friend in Miami who just called. They heard nothing.’’
With phone networks disrupted in Haiti, those who got through by cellphone were soon disconnected. And with power outages widespread, once cellphone batteries died, there was no way to charge them.
As the local Haitian community awaited word, Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States in Washington, urged all Haitians to be strong.
“The only thing I can say is that the Haitian people are a really courageous people, and in the past, when we’ve been hit hard, we come back fighting,’’ Joseph said in a telephone interview. “With the help of everyone, we’ll live through this.’’
David Manzo, president of Cotting School in Lexington - which has a sister school called Wings of Hope in Fermathe, about 45 miles south of Port au Prince - said he received word briefly by cellphone late last night that the school’s several dozen students were safe. But the school was severely damaged, the children had nowhere to sleep, and the roads leading out of the village were blocked by debris.
Both schools serve special needs children, and Cotting School staff travel to Haiti twice a year to volunteer at the school, which has many students with cerebral palsy and epilepsy.
“The kids are all right. That’s some good news,’’ Manzo said in a phone interview.
Jean Filias hosts a Haitian radio program on Radio Energy (1620-AM) in Dorchester. His phone was ringing off the hook last night with callers wondering about their relatives.
“They’re very scared. They don’t know what’s going on. It’s hard for them,’’ Filias said. “I just tell them to be calm and wait for tomorrow.’’
Frustrated by the lack of information, many turned to the Internet.
Bill Forry, managing editor of The Boston Haitian Reporter, a monthly newspaper, blogged about the earthquake online.
“We’re trying to help people here make that connection and know that they’re not alone in this,’’ Forry said.
In Dorchester, the earthquake cast a pall over La Difference Restaurant, a brightly painted eatery that just reopened a few months ago after a fire ripped through the building.
Joel Eugene, a 21-year-old college student, said he was able to reach a cousin, a student in Port-au-Prince, for a few seconds.
“She said that it just happened just now. Everyone is panicked,’’ he said. “Then all of the sudden the communication just ended.’’
Eugene’s fleeting conversation is more than Widner Degand, 35, a taxi driver, and Wislly Luxama, 21, a nurse, had heard as they lingered in Bon Appétit Restaurant, down Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan.
Luxama was trying to get in touch with his grandmother, a US citizen who was spending the winter in Haiti.
“As soon as she calls me I will buy her a ticket to come home with me,’’ he said.
Degand, who has five children in Haiti, dialed their numbers without success. He kept his back to the television, avoiding the scenes of destruction.
“I don’t want to watch the news,’’ he said. “I just want to hear from my family.’’
--more--"
I've only watched a little bit. The images ripped up my heart, and I'm out of words.
"US 'ready to assist' after Haiti quake: Obama
"Wow, that was fast! I'll bet the folks in New Orleans are really impressed!" -- Wake the Flock Up
Staying with the locals:
"News - or lack of it - tortures local relatives" by David Abel and Brian R. Ballou, Globe Staff | January 14, 2010
When his cellphone rang yesterday in his Somerville office, Guerlince Semerzier’s eyes widened as he recognized a phone number from Haiti. The Somerville Haitian Coalition board president excused himself from a meeting so he could take the call, then returned minutes later, biting his lower lip.
A friend had called from near the capital, Port-au-Prince, telling him that six of her relatives died in the massive earthquake that rocked the Caribbean nation a day earlier. “I think that as more news comes out of there, it will be very sad,’’ he said, fighting tears.
Yup.
It was a day of anguish for local Haitians, the nation’s third-largest Haitian population. As the region mobilized to support relief efforts, people constantly checked their phones for messages, hoping for any word from loved ones in the stricken country. Many calling from the Boston area heard only busy signals or a recording saying they could not be connected.
At the Haitian consul general’s office on Boylston Street, Vice Consul Jean Joseph Leandre reached his father early yesterday in Port-au-Prince and was relieved he had survived unscathed. Then he learned his mother-in-law had perished when her house collapsed, and a sister-in-law lost both legs.
“The house she lived in crumbled,’’ Leandre said, referring to his mother-in-law. “She did not have time to get out.’’
Marie Jean-Louis spent the day hoping to hear from her brother, who flew to Haiti last week to oversee the building of a health clinic in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Like thousands of other Haitians in Boston, Jean-Louis repeatedly tried to reach relatives after a massive earthquake a day earlier.
“I am horrified, petrified, numb,’’ Jean-Louis said. “I don’t know what to think. Right now, we’re not getting any news. No e-mail, no phone. I have no way to explain how I’m feeling. We’re just extremely worried.’’
Leaders of the Boston area’s 600,000-member Haitian community gathered in clusters to organize relief efforts and console one another. The city dispatched counselors to public schools with substantial numbers of Haitian students, and announced it would set up a crisis center today in Dorchester to help local families seeking information and assistance.
At a meeting last night at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End, government officials, church leaders, and community groups announced plans to help the relief effort.
US Senator John F. Kerry told the crowd of about 400 that Navy ships were en route to Haiti carrying rescue helicopters, relief supplies, and military units specializing in rescue missions in disaster areas. “The first planes are already on the ground,’’ Kerry said.
Hmmmmmm!
Cardinal Sean O’Malley told the crowd that the Boston Archdiocese will hold a special collection for earthquake victims. Parishes can do the collection this weekend or on Jan. 30 and 31.
The funds will go to Catholic Relief Services, which O’Malley said has dedicated $5 million to the effort so far. “Here in Boston, we want to do as much as humanly possible,’’ O’Malley said.
Haitian Americans United, a local nonprofit, has set up a relief fund with Citizens Bank. Supporters can donate at any local branch. Other nonprofits accepting donations include the International Red Cross, Partners in Health, and Catholic Charities.
I don't see the JEWISH CHARITY!
Jean-Samuel Merlain of Milton attended last night’s meeting and called the local relief efforts a work in progress. He and his wife, Nirva, have not been able to reach their relatives in Haiti. “I’m devastated,’’ he said. “I can’t describe how it feels right now.’’
Governor Deval Patrick told the group that the state public health and public safety departments are ready to assist and are awaiting instructions from the Obama administration.
State Representatives Marie St. Fleur and Linda Dorcena Forry organized the meeting at the cathedral. “It’s a tragedy,’’ Forry, a Dorchester Democrat and a Haitian-American, said in an interview. “I’m hoping people remain calm and we redouble our efforts. This is basically our neighbor, separated by the ocean.’’
She has family in Haiti, including her father’s brothers and sisters. To her knowledge, she said, they are safe. Forry praised the efforts of President Obama but said Haiti was too often an afterthought under the previous administration. “For eight years, Haiti has been right next to us, and no one has paid attention,’’ she said.
For ANY ADMINISTRATION and for the PAPERS!!!
At a meeting in Mattapan Square, some 50 business owners, clergy, social service providers, and others established what they are calling the Massachusetts Haitian-American Earthquake Relief Task Force, said Jean Marc Jean Baptiste, executive director of Haitian-American Public Health Initiatives in Mattapan. He said the group created teams for counseling, postdisaster management, and emergency needs, which he said include water, tents, and blankets.
He plans to lead a team that will fly to Haiti within the next few days. “There’s a lot of work to do,’’ he said. Jean Jeune, coordinator of the Cambridge Haitian Services Collaborative, said he was meeting with city officials to set up an information center for Creole speakers. He said much of his family remains in southern Haiti and he had not heard directly from them.
“I’ve never seen something like what we’re seeing on TV,’’ he said. “It’s unbelievable, and with the lack of water and all kinds of diseases, things are going to get bad if there isn’t quick action.’’
An employee at the Sturbridge Worship Center said that five church members on a mission trip to Haiti are fine. The group, which included a 16-year-old, said “the earth was shaking pretty hard, and in the building, all of the things were falling off the shelves,’’ said Sandra Kraft, adding that the five saw a church collapse, killing 12 people inside.
John McHoul, a Christian missionary who grew up in Weymouth and has worked in Haiti with his wife for more than 20 years, posted photos on his blog of the destruction of his home and the mission where he works. He said his family was unhurt. In his blog, he described the damage to the mission: “The wall on all four sides of the boys’ house has collapsed. There is significant damage to the wall on two sides of the girls’ house and at the women’s center and at my house. We, of course, have no city power and no water, due to broken pipes. The inside of all the houses are littered with broken glass, and whatever was on the shelves now is on the floor.’’
The crisis in Haiti reached the area’s college students, too. Britney Gengel of Rutland, a student at Lynn University in Florida, was among the missing. Her parents did not want to talk last night, saying, “We really need to keep our phone line open.’’
Kim Thurler, Tufts University spokeswoman, said five students and two faculty members from the Fletcher School had been doing research in Port-au-Prince involving microfinance. None suffered injuries, she said. “We’re obviously very relieved.’’
Northeastern’s Haitian Student Union is coordinating a collection of clothing, canned goods, and school supplies to send to Haiti. Wilner Auguste, founder of Mattapan-based Haitian-Americans United Inc., spent yesterday frantically calling relatives in Port-au-Prince, but he had yet to hear from any loved ones, including his brother, a nephew, and an aunt. One of his brothers-in-law, Dr. Gabrielle Timothee, is the country’s director of the Ministry Of Health, he said.
“We are very concerned about him because we heard that most of the state buildings are gone,’’ Auguste said. “We are afraid that he was in one of them.’’
At the meeting at the Somerville Haitian Coalition, Berlande Edouard, 39, of Medford, started sobbing. Her parents live in Port-au-Prince. “I’m just trying to find out about them,’’ she said, “but I haven’t heard anything from them since this happened.’’
In Dorchester, Ginette Antoine, 64, of Dorchester, stood in line to buy more cellphone minutes so she could try again to call her former husband, brother, and other kin. “I can’t get any news right now, and it’s just terrible waiting and not knowing,’’ she said.
--more--"And none of these pick-ups match my Globe piece, so....
"Aid workers contend with panic and looting a day after earthquake" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press | January 14, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The tiny bodies of children lay in piles next to the ruins of their collapsed school. People with faces covered by white dust and the blood of open wounds roamed the streets. Frantic doctors wrapped heads and stitched up sliced limbs in a hotel parking lot.
Oooh. Oooh, God!
The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, struggling to recover from the strikes of four catastrophic storms in 2008, was a picture of heartbreaking devastation yesterday after a magnitude-7 quake. Tuesday’s quake left a landscape of collapsed buildings - hospitals, schools, churches, ramshackle homes, even the gleaming national palace - the rubble sending up a white cloud that shrouded the entire capital.
Yesterday, ambulances weaved in and out of crowds, swerving to miss the bodies lying in the street and the men on foot who lugged stretchers bearing some of the injured. Shocked survivors wandered in a daze, some wailing the names of loved ones, praying, or calling for help.
(Blog editor just lost it; can't even imaging it. Can not even imagine it)
Others with injuries growing into infections sat by the roadside, waiting for doctors who were not sure to come. Search-and-rescue helicopters buzzed over the bodies of partially clothed victims in mounds of rubble and twisted steel. Everywhere, there was panic, urgency, pleas for help.
“Thousands of people poured out into the streets, crying, carrying bloody bodies, looking for anyone who could help them,’’ Bob Poff, divisional director of disaster services in Haiti for the Salvation Army, said in a posting on the agency’s website....
God Bless You. I'm glad I put in the kettle every year, even this one.
Poff wrote that he was driving down the mountain from Petionville, a hillside city, when the earthquake struck. “Our truck was being tossed to and fro like a toy, and when it stopped, I looked out the windows to see buildings ‘pancaking’ down,’’ he wrote. Poff said he and others piled bodies into his truck and took them down the hill, hoping to get them medical attention.
There was no reliable count, but officials feared thousands, maybe tens of thousands, had died in the quake. Some Haitian leaders suggested the figure could be higher than 100,000.
Trending that way, yeah.
Under tents fashioned from bloody sheets, dozens lay moaning from the pain of cuts in their heads, broken bones, and crushed ribs. Several thousand Haitian police and international peacekeepers poured into the streets yesterday to clear debris, direct traffic, and maintain security. Looters prowled through shops, then blended into crowds of refugees lugging salvaged possessions.
Actually, DESPITE the MSM REPORTING THAT -- like dick AC360 -- I heard ALL HAITIANS were STUNNED and COMING TOGETHER!!
Haitians who could still walk were streaming out of the capital by the hundreds, many of them balancing suitcases on their heads. In Petionville, about 200 victims, including many small children, huddled together in a theater parking lot and rigged tarps out of bedsheets to protect themselves from the scorching sun....
Sophie Perez, Haiti director of the CARE, a US-based humanitarian organization, told her colleagues in an e-mail: “Everything is urgent.’’
For once I AGREE! GET MOVING NOW!!!
"In Haiti, tragedy, a way of life, is redefined" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer | January 14, 2010
Gunsly Milsoit, left, comforts his brother-in-law Leo Pierre after Leo's wife and Gunsly's sister, Milsoit Kelly, who was three months pregnant, died in a four story building collapse from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Jonathan M. Katz is The Associated Press' correspondent in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He filed this first-person account of the moments after Tuesday's earthquake, which has redefined tragedy for a nation that knows it all too well.
------
PETIONVILLE, Haiti (AP) -- I was sitting on my bed surfing the Internet when I noticed silence, followed by a weird groaning sound. I figured it was a passing water truck. But funny, I thought -- sounds more like an earthquake.
The house started shaking. Then it really started shaking. I walked out of my room and kneeled slowly to the undulating floor, laptop in hand, as windows, two years' worth of Haitian art and a picture of my grandfather smashed around me.
I was not hurt. Not only that, the staircase in the house where I live and work, while completely invisible behind a choking white cloud of drywall and dust, was still standing. I yelled out for Evens, the AP's all-in-one driver/translator/bodyguard here.
To my shock and delight he answered: "Let's go."
I went. Barefoot, over rocks, past a crack running the height of the house, out to the street in my underwear, first to look for a telephone to call in what had happened, then brave any aftershocks and return to the house for a chance at shoes and pants.
It's been nearly impossible to get an Internet or phone signal since then. So consider it my pure but well-founded speculation that many reports of the destruction of Port-au-Prince include a phrase like, "Haiti is no stranger to suffering."
In the wake of Tuesday's magnitude-7 earthquake, which leveled much of the Haitian capital and left perhaps tens of thousands dead, it is both an understatement and an overstatement.
Sure, Haiti is no stranger to suffering: For most people here, tragedy is more common than lunch. And yet this nation has never faced anything on such a cataclysmic scale.
Less than two years ago, the country's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, was left underwater by a limping tropical storm that would have barely disrupted traffic in Miami.
As our photographer and I came in on a raft with Brazilian soldiers, we passed bodies floating in the street. It was the third of four named storms to hit the country in the space of a month.
Barely two months later, a school fell down in the slum-and-mansion suburb of Petionville, and about 100 people died. The first sign was a noise that sounded like sirens coming from over the hill. They were the voices of screaming parents.
Here, passing a dead body in the streets after yet another storm or political coup merits little more than a passing comment about how properly the face has been covered.
Now we have to try to understand what it means that such a long history of pain pales next to the devastation wrought by 15 to 20 seconds of shaking one January afternoon.
Behind the now-bisected AP house is the same slum where that ill-fated school entered our nightmares two years ago. This time, every flimsy building had caved. The white cloud scratching my lungs hung across the horizon. And the screams were a screeching thunder.
The city is a ruin. Fuel, food and water are running in short supply. Mothers have lost their children. Children have lost their families. Entire neighborhoods are sleeping in the streets. People walk miles up and down mountains, carrying everything they own, with no real place to go.
But here is what is new: You have perhaps seen the pictures of the national palace smashed into a lurching heap over the grassy Champs de Mars. Or of the collapsed twin spires of the Notre Dame d'Haiti cathedral complex, which claimed the life of the archbishop. Or of the collapsed parliament where the senate president remained trapped Wednesday.
Imagine if nearly all the institutions in your life -- flawed, but still the only ones -- disappeared, all at once.
In a life where the next meal is uncertain, where the next rain may claim your home, where the next election may happen or not -- where that is the normal. Think of having those institutions smashed all around you.
At the very moment when you have lost someone, perhaps many people, you loved.
I could never imagine what a Haitian is feeling. Never.
I simply could not understand even if I tried.
The AP house, a footnote in the devastation, is an uninhabitable mess on the verge of collapse. An entire city is screaming for help. I've finally logged onto the Internet long enough to see that some of those calls will be answered, at least in some way.
But what will happen after that help, like so much here, has vanished? Will there be an after?--more--"
The next piece is an NYT replacement for the web version:
"Ruin, desperation in Haiti; Bodies lie in piles; survivors struggle; president says toll is unimaginable | International aid effort underway for nation's worst quake in a century" by Simon Romero, New York Times | January 14, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Survivors strained desperately yesterday 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 Tuesday night.
Calling the death toll “unimaginable’’ as he surveyed the wreckage, Haiti’s president, Rene Preval, said he had no idea where he would sleep. Schools, hospitals, and a prison were damaged. Sixteen UN peacekeepers were killed, at least 140 UN workers were missing, including the chief of its mission, Hedi Annabi. The city’s archbishop, Monsignor 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 a century.
“Please save my baby!’’ Jeudy Francia, a woman in her 20s, shrieked outside 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.’’
Preval said thousands of people were probably killed, the Associated Press reported. Leading Senator Youri Latortue told the AP that 500,000 could be dead, but acknowledged that nobody really knows.
They are staying 50,000 to 100,000 right now; however, if it becomes HALF a MILLION that will be one of the -- if not THE GREATEST NATURAL DISASTER in WORLD HISTORY!!
Governments and aid agencies from Beijing to Grand Rapids began marshaling supplies and staff 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....
I heard China was the first to get there.
The quake struck just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, ravaging the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroying some of its most important cultural symbols. “Parliament has collapsed,’’ Preval 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.’’
Not an under statement at all.
President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support’’ of the United States. Obama said that US 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. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what the nation needed. But the president urged Americans to dig into their pockets and to go to the White House’s website, www.whitehouse.gov, to find ways to donate money.
He has got SOME NERVE!!!
See:
Obama will seek additional $33 billion for wars
The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next yearOr GET IT from the BANKER BONUSES, huh!?
I mean, I'm giving, but DON'T ASK ME, 'kay, Obama?
“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,’’ Obama said, speaking in the morning in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joe Biden at his side.
I don't like his globalist chatter, especially when he is dropping missiles on people.
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.
Why were they not already open? People starving there BEFORE this!
The United Nations said it was freeing up $10 million in emergency relief money, the European Union pledged $4.4 million, and groups such as Doctors Without Borders were setting up clinics in tents and open-air triage centers. 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, Haiti’s capital, were also busy searching for their own dead and missing. Five workers with the UN mission in Haiti were killed and as many as 100 more were missing after the collapse of the office’s headquarters in the Christopher Hotel in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Forty or more other UN employees were missing at a sprawling compound occupied by UN agencies.
It was one of the deadliest single days for UN employees. The head of the group’s Haitian mission, Annabi, of Tunisia, and his deputy were among the missing, said Alain LeRoy, the UN peacekeeping chief. Earlier yesterday, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said in radio interviews that Annabi had been killed in the collapse. The Brazilian Army, which has one of the largest peacekeeping presences in Haiti, said 11 of its soldiers had been killed and seven had been injured; seven more were unaccounted for.
Je-sus!!!
During a driving tour of the capital yesterday, 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 by Skype. “There was unimaginable destruction.’’
It is Haiti's 9/11 and WORSE, folks!!
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,’’ McPhun said. “They just want help, and anybody with a car is better off than they are.’’
Contaminated drinking water is a longstanding and severe 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 to try to avert outbreaks of dysentery.
More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled the country through Tuesday night and into the early morning, said Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,’’ she said.
So not only are the Haitians in shock, the ground is still rolling!
Bob Poff, a Salvation Army official, described in a written account posted on the Salvation Army’s website 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. Poff described how he and hundreds of neighbors spent Tuesday night outside, in the playground near a children’s home run by the group. 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. SOS. SOS . . . Please help us.’’ Photos from Haiti yesterday showed a hillside scraped nearly bare of its houses, which had tumbled into the ravine below.
Haiti’s many manmade woes - its dire poverty, political infighting, and history of insurrection - have been worsened 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.--more--"
And the fault is there, folks:
"Big fault known to span region" by Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff | January 14, 2010
The catastrophic 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti on Tuesday afternoon occurred in a region long known to be seismically active, according to geologists, but it’s been more than a century since the earth shook there with such ferocity.
Maybe it was ready to rip then.
The quake occurred close to the surface along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault, which runs along an east-west line extending from Jamaica to the southern part of Haiti.
“Even though large earthquakes of this size aren’t common there, the fact that there’s a fault system that runs through there makes it not surprising,’’ said John Bellini, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.
I must admit, I am suspicious of the HAARP, readers!
Another large earthquake of about the same magnitude occurred in the area in December 1897, Bellini said. Like the San Andreas fault in California, the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault is a strike-slip fault in which tectonic plates move horizontally in opposite directions, scraping against each other.
Hey, I remember that from geology!
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“This was a larger earthquake than we had observed on this fault for over 100 years, and the problem we always have as seismologists when we go look at an area and try and convince people you have to take a seismic hazard seriously is they always look at what happened in the past,’’ said John Ebel, director of the Weston Observatory and a professor of geophysics at Boston College.
The earthquake occurred near the surface, making it very destructive. Such shallow strike-slip earthquakes trigger movement known as Love waves, strong horizontal shaking that can bring down buildings, Ebel said. The region has also been rocked by aftershocks, with at least 35 measured so far, 14 of them over 5.0 magnitude, according to Bellini. Ebel said large aftershocks will continue in the coming days.
There is no known way to predict when an earthquake will occur, and the tectonic plates in the Caribbean are largely beneath the sea - meaning they are monitored far less than the San Andreas fault. That means geologists know less about the ways in which the tectonic plates normally slip against each other and have less insight into when stresses may be building up that could cause an earthquake.
And who knows when the HAARP gets plucked!
“Earthquakes aren’t random events; they occur when stresses build up,’’ said Michele Cooke, a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Information about normal slippage “lets you know a little more, so you can make educated guesses about recurrence intervals for that particular fault’’ - such as whether it’s likely an earthquake will occur in the next decade or half-century.
From a scientific point of view, the quake was not atypical. What made it tragic was that it occurred in a region known to be seismically active, but a country nevertheless ill-prepared.
“It’s in a place that’s probably one of the least likely to be able to handle such a catastrophic event,’’ Bellini said.
--more--"What was CUT from ALL THAT:
"A small contingent of US ground troops could be on their way soon, although it was unclear whether the troops would be used for security operations or for humanitarian efforts.
Something I certainly noticed amongst all the other rewritten, reedited (?) items!
Still trying to help back here:
"Massachusetts groups marshal aid, relief efforts" by James F. Smith and Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | January 14, 2010
With the eyes of the world on earthquake-stricken Haiti, Massachusetts groups and individuals are mobilizing efforts, both large and small, to aid the victims of the disaster.
Massachusetts General Hospital planned to dispatch two medical-response teams to Haiti. Partners in Health, the Boston-based group that has worked for decades on health and development in Haiti, has helped set up an emergency field hospital to treat the wounded.
From the rubble of the devastated capital, Port-au-Prince, the injured are making their way slowly to outlying hospitals and clinics run by Partners in Health, according to an agency spokesman. “People have started to arrive,’’ Andrew Marx said. “Some of them are getting there on their own. There has been more than a trickle of people coming in.’’
At Partners’ hospital in the town of Hinche, workers loaded a truck with medical supplies and prepared to make the 2 1/2-hour journey to Port-au-Prince. The need, they learned from a colleague in the capital, is acute. “We heard from a doctor who is in Port-au-Prince that the only thing she had for pain was aspirin,’’ Marx said. “So there’s a desperate need for pain medications and simple things like bandages.’’
Partners in Development, based in Ipswich, has a medical clinic in Port-au-Prince and is organizing a medical team to send there, said Lisa Lassey, director of program development.
The City of Boston will open an emergency response center today at SEIU Local 1199’s union headquarters at 150 Mount Vernon St. in Dorchester for those who are trying to contact relatives in Haiti. The center will have phone lines, translators, grief counselors, and computers with Internet access, said Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
In addition, Menino said the city will establish a relief fund to help support local families with relatives in Haiti and offer equipment and personnel for search-and rescue operations in the stricken country. Superintendent Carol R. Johnson dispatched counselors to Boston schools that serve a large number of youths from Haiti or children of Haitian immigrants.
Governor Deval Patrick, touring Edwards Middle School in Charlestown yesterday with Menino, said he wanted to let Haitians in the state and around the world know that “our thoughts and prayers are with them.’’ Patrick said he had contacted all state agencies to see what type of resources they might have available to help. He also was in contact with the White House on relief efforts.
Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley authorized a second collection in the parishes of the Archdiocese of Boston for earthquake relief. “Parishes may choose either this coming weekend, January 16 and 17, or the weekend of January 30 and 31 to take the collection,’’ O’Malley said in a written statement. “Funds collected will be sent to Catholic Relief Services to assist in relief efforts.’’
In Washington, D.C., Senators John F. Kerry and Paul Kirk joined 13 colleagues to urge President Obama to grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitians living in the United States. Gaining the status, which has previously been pushed by other state and local lawmakers and by groups that assist immigrants, would halt the deportations of Haitian nationals until their country can recover.
In other relief efforts, UPS will ship packages under 50 pounds free to Haiti today, and the United Way and Salvation Army are holding clothing and food drives.
In addition, American Airlines is taking doctors and nurses to Haiti at no cost.
--more--""Haiti quake aid snarled; up to 50,000 feared dead" by Jonathan M. Katz and Tamara Lush, Associated Press Writers | January 14, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti --Doctors and search dogs, troops and rescue teams flew to this devastated land of dazed, dead and dying people Thursday, finding bottlenecks everywhere, beginning at a main airport short on jet fuel and ramp space and without a control tower.
The international Red Cross estimated 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday's cataclysmic earthquake, based on information from the Haitian Red Cross and government officials. Worries mounted, meanwhile, about food and water for the survivors.
"People have been almost fighting for water," aid worker Fevil Dubien said as he distributed water from a truck in a northern Port-au-Prince neighborhood.
Why does the Zionist press keep promoting the black savages bit?
From Virginia, from China, a handful of rescue teams were able to get down to work, scouring the rubble for survivors. In one "small miracle," searchers pulled a security guard alive from beneath the collapsed concrete floors of the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters, where many others were entombed.
But the silence of the dead otherwise was overwhelming in a city where uncounted bodies littered the streets in the 80-degree heat, and dust-caked arms and legs reached, frozen and lifeless, from the ruins. Outside the General Hospital morgue, hundreds of collected corpses blanketed the parking lot, as the grief-stricken searched for loved ones. Brazilian U.N. peacekeepers, key to city security, were trying to organize mass burials.
This is UNGODLY, readers!!
Patience already was wearing thin among the poorest who were waiting for aid, said David Wimhurst, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission. "Unfortunately, they're slowly getting more angry and impatient, because when they see us moving -- and we're patrolling the streets, the military and the police are out patrolling the streets in order to maintain a calm situation, so that humanitarian aid can be delivered," he said.
In Washington, President Barack Obama announced "one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history," starting with $100 million in aid. The first of 800 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division were to deploy to Haiti from North Carolina, to be followed by more than 2,000 Marines.
Now I AM hearing a HAARP!
From Europe, Asia and the Americas, other governments, the U.N. and private aid groups were sending planeloads of high-energy biscuits and other food, tents, blankets, water-purification gear, heavy equipment for removing debris, helicopters and other transport, and teams of hundreds of search-and-rescue, medical and other specialists.
Why does it take a DISASTER to get the stuff to Haiti?
They NEEDED ALL THIS BEFORE, too!!!!
But two days after much of this ramshackle city was shattered, the global helping hand was slowed by the poor roads, airport and seaport of a wretchedly poor nation.
Some 60 aid flights had arrived by midday Thursday, but they then had to contend with the chokepoint of an overloaded Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport. At midday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was temporarily halting all civilian flights from the U.S. at Haiti's request, because the airport was jammed and jet fuel was limited for return flights. The control tower had been destroyed in Tuesday's tremor, complicating air traffic. Civilian relief flights were later allowed to resume.
Those which did land then had to navigate Haiti's inadequate roads, sometimes blocked by debris or by quake survivors looking for safe open areas as aftershocks still rumbled through the city. The U.N. World Food Program said the quake-damaged seaport made ship deliveries of aid impossible. The looting of shops that broke out after the 7.0-magnitude quake struck late Tuesday afternoon added to concerns. The Brazilian military warned aid convoys to add security to guard against looting by the desperate population.
"There is no other way to get provisions," American Red Cross representative Matt Marek said of the store looting. "Even if you have money, those resources are going to be exhausted in a few days." The city's "ti-marchant," mostly women who sell food on the streets, were expected to run out soon....
The first U.S. military units to arrive took on a coordinating role at the airport, but State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley underlined, "We're not taking over Haiti."
First of all, WHY BRING IT UP then? I mean, a "crazy" conspiracy guy like me, yeah, but YOU BROUGHT IT UP as if in preemptive defense!
Little GUILT and foreknowledge?
Across the sprawling, hilly city, people milled about in open areas, hopeful for help, sometimes setting up camps amid piles of salvaged goods, including food scavenged from the rubble. Police and U.N. peacekeeper trucks pushed down crowded streets, showing little sign of coordinated action.
Small groups by roadsides could be seen burying dead. Other dust-covered bodies were being dragged down streets, toward hospitals where relatives hoped to leave them. Countless remained unburied, stacked up, children's bodies lying atop mothers, tiny feet poking from blankets.
Please, NO MORE!!!
The injured, meanwhile, waited for treatment in makeshift holding areas -- outside the General Hospital, for example, where the stench from piles of dead, just a few yards (meters) away, wafted over the assembled living.
Yeah, I'll bet the SMELL of death is STRONG!!!
Here and there, small tragedies unfolded. In the Petionville suburb, friends held back Kettely Clerge -- "I want to see her," she sobbed -- as neighbors with bare hands tried to dig out her 9-year-old daughter, Harryssa Keem Clerge, pleading for rescue, from beneath their home's rubble. "There's no police, there's nobody," the hopeless mother cried. By day's end, the girl was dead....
Nearby, firefighters from Fairfax County, Va., and a rescue team from China, with sniffer dogs, clambered through rubble and searched for signs of life. Two excavators stood by, ready to dig for survivors -- or dead.
Why so LATE with the MENTION, MSM?
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For the long-suffering people of Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, shock and disbelief were giving way to despair.
How could it not?
"We need food. The people are suffering. My neighbors and friends are suffering," said Sylvain Angerlotte, 22. "We don't have money. We don't have nothing to eat. We need pure water."
But life also went on.
I'm sorry, but I'm a bit offended by the remark, even if true. NOT FOR EVERYONE it didn't!
Brazilian soldiers helped deliver a baby girl in an improvised garage-hospital at their base, just hours after the quake hit.
I stand corrected!
As a PERSON who LOVES LIFE amidst SO MUCH EVIL and DEATH on our planet, this MADE ME CRY AGAIN!!!
Capt. Fabricio Almeida de Moura said the child was doing well, but the life of the mother, who apparently went into labor from the shock of the tremor, was in danger from bleeding, the Agencia Brasil news service reported.
Oh, God, please let the mommy pull through! Please!!!!
The unimaginable scope of the catastrophe left many Haitians, a fervently religious people, in helpless tears and prayer.
Reached by The Associated Press from New York, Yael Talleyrand, a 16-year-old student in Jacmel, on Haiti's south coast, told of thousands of people made homeless by the quake and sleeping on an airfield runway, "crying, praying and I had never seen this in my entire life."
They are COMING TOGETHER with each other for SUPPORT!!!
And so much for the globalist aid:
"In capital, Haitians fending for themselves
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Using sticks, crowbars and their own two hands, Haitians in search of loved ones raced against time today to dig out collapsed buildings here in the stricken capital....
Bodies lay in the streets. Dazed survivors huddled together, fearful of going indoors because of concerns that aftershocks would topple already shaky buildings.
On Delmas Street, men clawed at the twisted rubble of the Good Samarian School. They were searching for daughters, sisters, and cousins who went to class Tuesday at the all-girls section of the school and never returned. Their faces covered in bandanas to smother the stench, they grabbed at the debris with their bare hands, the urgency growing with each passing moment.
On Wednesday night, they heard voices and dropped food through the cracks in the heap. Today, they heard nothing.
Oh no!
"I know she came to school and she didn't come home,'' said Franz Thelusma, a police officer who flashed his badge and a photograph of his daughter, Charline, a budding teacher. "She watched over me. I'm not giving up until I find her."
Your blog editor is awash in water!
On the streets of the capital, many survivors and those wounded in the quake wandered aimlessly, balancing belongings atop their heads, unsure of where to turn for help. Most said they hadn't eaten for several days.
So not only are they traumatized and in shock, they are weak and need to dig through rubble!
Some Haitians interviewed expressed fears that criminals would prey on them, after Port-au-Prince's main prison collapsed, freeing scores of inmates.
Yeah, I saw this on TV and then I saw a report saying that was isolated and random, so WTF?
Aid workers trickled into Toussaint Louverture International Airport in the searing heat, the vanguard of the international relief effort that is taking shape.
That feels to much like a f***ing back slap for a bogged down effort.
On the tarmac, aid workers from Brazil, the United States, France, Belgium, and the United Nations hurredly unloaded supplies....
