Haiti's Capital Was Hit by 7.0 Earthquake

Haiti, the poorest country in Western Hemisphere was struck by a 7.0-magnitude tremor at 4:53 p.m. on Tuesday. The quake’s centered is only 5 or 6 miles deep and 14 miles west of Port-au-Prince, said the United States Geological Survey. Geophysicist KristinMarano of United States Geological Survey called it the strongest earthquake in Haiti since 1770.

Tom Jordan, an earthquake expert at the University of Southern California said that the quake occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally passed the other. The earthquake was felt in Eastern Cuba and in the Dominican Republic, which shares a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. Monsignor DionisioGarcia, archbishop of Santiago said that they felt the very strong rumble for a long time.

“Shallow quake is much more intense and creates the most damage locally because all of its energy is concentrated right there where earthquake is and where the people are,” said David Applegate, the senior science advisor for earthquake and geologic hazards at the U.S. Geological Survey. He said that the damage in Haiti was clearly vast and the poor construction standards added to the cause.

Following the collapse of a school in Petionville in November of 2008, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated that about 60 percents of the buildings were poorly built and unsafe in normal circumstances. Most of Haiti's 9 million people are very poor, and after years of political instability, the country has no real construction standards. Therefore, the quake's size and proximity to populated Port-au-Prince likely caused widespread casualties and structural damages.

Marie Michel who was in MontagneNoir, a mountain suburb south of Port-au-Prince, told Rachel Maddow of NBC News. “I heard a rumble, and then the house started to shake and a 5,000-square-foot solid house shook like a leaf. From where I’m standing, it looks like smoke, like a white cloud of smoke. I’m thinking it’s maybe the dust from buildings shanty houses collapsing."

Dixie Bickel, who runs two orphanages outside Port-au-Prince with her daughter, Laurie, told NBC News that the earthquake was the worst she had experienced in her 19 years in the country. She saw a building four stories tall was visibly twisted for about 30 seconds.

Henry Bahn of United States Department of Agriculture who was visiting Port-au-Prince said, "The sky is just gray with dust.” He said there were rocks strewn about and he saw in a ravine where several homes had stood was full of collapsed walls and rubbles, and barbed wires.

Residents of Thomassin, just outside Port-au-Prince, said the only road to the capital had been cut and phones were all dead. Therefore, it was hard to determine the extent of the damage and everything was just a rumor because it was nighttime and dark.

JocelynValcin of Boynton Beach, Florida, who flew in to Miami International Airport from Port-au-Prince said he was at the airport when the earthquake hit. He said, “The whole building was cracked down. The whole outside deteriorated."

Most early reports of the news about aftershocks and damages were based on second-hand communications from social media such as Twitter. Reports and photos were disturbing with people screaming in fear and roads blocked with debris. Airports are closed. American airline suspended all of their flights into and out of Port-Au-Prince.

Most of Haiti's 9 million people are very poor after years of political instability and there are 2 millions people in Port-au-Prince. An Associated Press videographer saw a wrecked hospital where people screamed for help in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince. Hundred of thousands of people were affected because there were many buildings collapsed.

State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley said in Washington that U.S. Embassy personnel were reported structures down and bodies that had been hit by debris were in the street and on the sidewalk. Therefore, it is going to be serious loss of life 

The Norwich Diocese of Connecticut said that they think at least two Americans working at its Haitian aid mission were trapped in rubble. Tony Jeanthenor said he had succeeded in reaching a family friend in Haiti who told of hearing people cry out for help from under debris. Marie Michel, a nurse from New York visiting Haiti for a funeral, heard unconfirmed report that at least one person was killed when a large supermarket nearby was flattened.