Severe quake hits Haiti, damage catastrophic

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582877,00.html


Fox News said:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A strong earthquake hit the impoverished country of Haiti on Tuesday afternoon, where a hospital collapsed and people were screaming for help. Other buildings also were damaged.

The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 14 miles west from the capital of Port-au-Prince, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

An Associated Press videographer saw the wrecked hospital in nearby Petionville, and a U.S. government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.

No further details on any causualties or other damage were immediately available.

"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a visiting official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "The sky is just gray with dust."

Bahn said he was walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake.

"I just held on and bounced across the wall," he said. "I just hear a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."

Bahn said there were rocks strewn all over the place and he saw a ravine where several homes had been built. "It's just full of collapsed walls and rubble and barbed wire," he said.
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Re: Severe quake hits Haiti, hospital collapses

A tsunami watch is in effect for Haiti, Cuba, The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.
 
Re: Severe quake hits Haiti, hospital collapses

Not just a hospital. According to local report, the presidential palace, the cathedral, the parliament building and several ministry buildings also may have collapsed. Cars reportedly were blowing up in the street as things went.
 
Re: Severe quake hits Haiti, hospital collapses

wow, those poor haitians.

so much damage. this is going to take forever to recover from.
 
7.0s are big quakes, but honestly small compared to killer quakes of legend, which rank closer to 8.0 or higher. The issue is that Haiti is such an impoverished country that the buildings are shoddy and adhere to no standards - the UN building, for example, was apparently severely damaged. Remember the old saying: Earthquakes don't kill people - buildings do.
 
They keep showing it on the news...

Also, it may be 7.0, but they said on the news that the building there have very, very poor structure, even some of the more expensive buildings do, so yeah, that makes it worse as more buildings are likely to fall down/cave in...
 
The fact that the epicenter was 15 kilometers from a major city also factors in how deadly the quake may turn out to be.
 
Unfortunate how the epicenter was so close to Port-au-Prince...
 
The leaders in Haiti are now estimating death tolls on the levels of the Indian Ocean quake five years ago.


That is...a frightening estimate. I really hope that isn't true.
 
That would indeed be catastrophic. I've heard estimates of 100 000 dead. Man can kill thousands, but it takes nature only one minute to bring these devastations. Kinda puts our small, everyday problems in a perspective, doesn't it?
 
Indeed. Six digits casualties...Oh God.
 
The scariest part is that it's possible. Port-au-Prince has a population of several million, and it was largely destroyed.
 
Arcane Mind said:
The scariest part is that it's possible. Port-au-Prince has a population of several million, and it was largely destroyed.
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100,000 people dead isn't much compared to the population of Port-au-Prince, but as a standalone statistic, it's quite a lot.
 
"Civilization exists at the demands of geology, not the other way around." (tentative quotation)
 
The entirety of Haiti has about 10 million people. If 100,000 people died, that's about 1%. If 500,000 died--as the high estimates are putting it--that's 5% of the population, or 1 person out of every 20. That's just devastating to a country.
 
And factor in the homeless, the injured, the people who now can't go to work anymore (because their workplace is a pile of rubble), we may be looking at as much as 30% of the country.

It's horrific.
 
evkl said:
The entirety of Haiti has about 10 million people. If 100,000 people died, that's about 1%. If 500,000 died--as the high estimates are putting it--that's 5% of the population, or 1 person out of every 20. That's just devastating to a country.
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That's relatively small compared to how many people live in Haiti... but that's still a lot of deaths.

And as Figment pointed out, there's still the homeless and wounded that should be taken into account. And that figure is always larger than the death numbers.

What a disaster. :(
 
evkl said:
The entirety of Haiti has about 10 million people. If 100,000 people died, that's about 1%. If 500,000 died--as the high estimates are putting it--that's 5% of the population, or 1 person out of every 20. That's just devastating to a country.
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Not to mention that all the government building have been destroyed. It's just incredible the amount of damage that this quake caused. And I don't know if any amount of aid we can provide can really get them back on their feet again. It was that terrible.
 
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