Haiti Earthquake News
A powerful earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale shook Haiti on Tuesday, causing several buildings to collapse in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation and leading to an unknown number of fatalities, officials and witnesses said.
![[Haiti Map]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-FG218_haiti__D_20100112192719.gif)
The earthquake was centered just 10 miles southwest of the crowded and impoverished capital of Port-au-Prince. Making matters worse, the earthquake was relatively shallow at a depth of five miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Shallow earthquakes can cause more damage.
“I think it’s really a catastrophe of major proportions,” Haiti’s ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Alcide Joseph, told CNN.
“I saw dead bodies, people are screaming, they are on the street panicking, people are hurt,” she told The Wall Street Journal. “There are a lot of wounded, broken heads, broken arms.”
In Port-au-Prince, many houses built on steep ravines have collapsed, Ms. Chenet said. She said from her house she had heard a couple of explosions, which she believed to be gas explosions. The orphans in the two institutions run by Mercy and Sharing weren’t hurt, although an orphanage worker suffered a broken leg, she said.
President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with the people of Haiti, and U.S. officials said they would consider immediate humanitarian aid.
An Associated Press videographer saw the collapsed wreckage of a hospital in Petionville, near Port-au-Prince. Reuters news agency cited a witness saying several buildings had crumbled in the capital and that there were dead and injured trapped in the rubble.
At least 1.8 million people live within the area where the earthquake had its highest intensity, John Bellini, a geophysicist at the USGS, told The Wall Street Journal. “With a strong and shallow earthquake like this in such a populated area, it could really cause substantial damage,” he said.
The quake was the most powerful to hit Haiti since at least 1770, according to USGS records, Mr. Bellini added. “This isn’t normally an earthquake-prone area,” he said.
Within minutes of the original tremor, two aftershocks rolled through the area, measuring 5.9 and 5.5 on the Richter scale.
Eight in ten Haitians live in poverty, according to the CIA World Factbook. The Caribbean nation was hit hard by a series of hurricanes in the past few years, adding to the country’s misery.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere subcommittee, said: “This is the worst possible time for a natural disaster in Haiti, a country which is still recovering from the devastating storms of just over a year ago.”
Disasters like this are the greatest opportunity to show what online collaboration can achieve in the real world. These visualisations are great. There are updated interactive maps here for Haiti earthquake and the international response.
we pray for all the victims,and give support thru prayers to the people that are not rescue…and to the people are most generous please give your donations.thanks jojo of saudi arabia
you can donate via text, phone or through the “Hope for Haiti” Web site,www.hopeforhaitinow.org, for the next six months. Among the organizations who will receive funds from the telethon include Oxfam America, UNICEF, and the Clinton-Bush Haiti Foundation.
well ifeel bad
for thee pepole in haiti ihopee soon 
everythinq goes back to thee way it was does pepole really dont reserve that
well im qonna pray fot each one of you
loveeyouu
karen