PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A powerful earthquake hit the impoverished country of Haiti on Tuesday. A hospital collapsed and people were screaming for help.

Other buildings also were damaged, The Associated Press reported.

The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7 and was centered about 10 miles west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.







A 7.0 is a very big earthquake. Pray for the people who live there. This is a terrible disaster. Widespread devastation has been reported.

This breaking news is being covered right now on CNN. US Aid is already being requested, and a 5.9 afterhock has been recorded by the USGS after the preliminary quake.

Is a disaster indeed! Very sad...
Love and light sent out to those suffering in this already poor and devastated location.

looks like most of Haiti is leveled

they are saying damage could run in the thousands

I'm watching the yahoo ticker for real time updates

no tsunami yet (as of 5:20 central)

Yes, and what I would like, what we all should like, is for all of us to lend support, concern, blood donation, money, our prayers, for the impoverished country of Haiti. Plenty of support was lent out to Thailand after the tsunami hit, and when Guangzhou China had that major earthquake, and even Haiti before when they had hurricanes, tropical storms, flooding and mudslides. Just because this event didn't happen here in the U.S. doesn't mean we shouldn't pull together and be very concerned. We would hope for the rest of the world to help the U.S. if a major quake hit NYC or L.A., so I think we ought to be a little more concerned. God bless and protect the people of Haiti.

Central Florida has had at least 5 or 6 major sinkholes open up over night."They" are blaming it on the citrus and strawberry growers for running their sprinklers to prevent damage from the freezing temps here.I think these sinkholes are somehow related to the Earthquake and not the farmers.

Wow, I didn't know that, Trib, let us know if you find out more about this sinkhole phenomenon and if it really was a precursor to the Haiti quake. Would be an interesting connection if it pans out. I honestly don't see how geologically, flooding the fields would cause sinkholes, it has to be something else.

the sinkholes in Florida are most likely due to the watering

Florida has a "karst topography"




NOAA was saying that because of the undersea geology there isnt a major chance of tsunamis except in the local islands. so Forida and the gulf coast and the yucatan should be safe

Not the flooding of the fields,but we all get are water from what is called the Florida Aquifer.The massive amounts of water the groves are using are causing a drop in the aquifer causing the displacment (since all we have is sand NO ROCK underneath us) to make the land drop.I still believe this is not connected to wells but the Earthquake.5 or 6 in a 24 hour period is very odd.Espeically the day before an Earthquake so close.

Another 4.8 at 627 est

the earthquakes could have been the tipping point

karst geology is limestone bedrock that is VERY faulted and cracked. and the ground water seeping through follows those cracks and eats it out even more creating lots of underground caverns. and then when the water is pulled from those caverns the sinkholes are created

Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico is the example most textbooks use


I found this too

They are getting hammered.

7.0 at 453 est
5.9 at 500 est
5.5 at 512 est
5.1 at 612 est
4.8 at 627 est
4.5 at 635 est

So Florida is gonna fall into the Ocean before Califorina does...It must because 2012 is SO close.

(CNN) -- The faithful prayed -- for relief, for mercy, for safety -- as aftershocks rumbled across Haiti on Tuesday evening.

"It's 8:44 p.m. and we're still getting aftershocks! Can hear people gathered in the distance singing prayers," wrote Richard Morse, hotel manager at the Oloffson Hotel in the capital, Port-au-Prince. On Twitter, he captured the aftermath of a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Haiti, causing widespread destruction.

The quake, which happened shortly before 5 p.m., was followed by at least 18 aftershocks, averaging a magnitude of 5.0, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

As the night went on, the singing and praying intensified and then waned, Morse wrote. What he didn't hear in all the commotion were helicopters or ambulances.

The panic that engulfed Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, could be witnessed on an online Haitian entertainment channel called Haitipal, which suddenly became an essential communication tool.

Frantic callers broadcast pleas for help.

"My cousin has a broken leg and she's trying to get to the hospital," one caller said. "She has two kids. ... How can she get to the hospital?"



The man gave his cousin's address, and the channel's commentator asked anyone listening who lived nearby to see whether he could help.

Many callers expressed their sympathies and prayers for the people of Haiti, while others told of fallen buildings and damaged homes.

The first photographs from the area showed collapsed walls and sidewalks covered with cinder block-size chunks of debris. One photograph, taken by members of a American church mission group, showed a dead man in a gray T-shirt and jeans, hunched on the ground.

Another broadcaster, Radio-Tele Ginen, collected and posted photographs on its Web site that hinted at the damage and deaths caused by the earthquake.

One showed two bodies, completely covered in dust, inside the bed of a pickup. Others showed men and women bloodied by rubble.

The building that houses Citibank's offices in Port-au-Prince, one of the most modern in the city, collapsed, bank spokeswoman Liliana Mejia told CNN.

There were 12 employees unaccounted for after the three-story building fell, she said.

Jonathan de la Durantaye was in a car when the quake hit. His initial thought was that a tire had come loose, he told CNN.

Then he noticed that the power lines were moving above, and then a fence or wall next the car started to fall. That was in the northwest part of the city, in an area called Croix des Bouquets.

Appeals for aid after quake strikes

Reports of exactly how widespread the damage was, or how many people had perished, was hard to gather because of limited communication with the island.

Phyllis Bass, an American missionary in Haiti, was able to reach her son-in-law via text message. Using texts, she told of how she saw dead bodies on the road, and how she and four other missionaries were helping the injured.


Still too soon, but we'll know more today Wednesday 1/13/10. We all need to pray for these innocent people. God help them.

looks like damage is gonna run in the thousands of dollars

well it IS Haiti

Haitian capital largely destroyed in quake
Casualties severe and widespread throughout Port-au-Prince


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34829978/ns/world_news-americas/



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The Haitian capital was largely destroyed in the most powerful earthquake to hit the country in more than 200 years. Journalists from The Associated Press described severe and widespread casualties after a tour of streets where blood and bodies could be seen.

The damage was described as staggering even in a country accustomed to tragedy and disaster. AP reporters said the National Palace was a crumbled ruin and tens of thousands of people were homeless.

Many gravely injured people sat in the street, pleading for doctors many hours after the quake. In public squares thousands of people were singing hymns and holding hands.

The quake had a magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was followed by numerous aftershocks, one with magnitude 5.9, the USGS reported.

"The whole city is in darkness. You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go," said Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity.

'Major, major disaster'
In the hillside neighborhood of Petionville, Domersant said he saw no police or rescue vehicles.

"People are trying to dig victims out with flashlights," he said. "I think hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement."

"People are out in the streets, crying, screaming, shouting," Karel Zelenka, director of the Catholic Relief Services office in Haiti, told The Washington Post. "This will be a major, major disaster."

Reuters video showed numerous bodies beneath collapsed walls and the presidential palace lying in ruins. President René Garcia Préval was reported to be safe.

Numerous other public buildings were destroyed, including the parliament building, the Finance Ministry, the Public Works Ministry, the Palace of Justice and Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Port-au-Prince, the national cathedral, Haiti TV reported.

The main United Nations building in Port-au-Prince collapsed and a number of personnel were unaccounted for, said U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy. He said other U.N. installations also were seriously damaged. The U.N. has a 9,000-member peacekeeping force in Haiti, following a 2004 rebellion.

The executive director of Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Conn., Emily Smack, said she believed two of the organization's staff, both Americans, were trapped in their partially collapsed mission house.

The earthquake also destroyed much of the Port-au-Prince air traffic control tower, and flights were being rerouted by other Haitian air traffic facilities.

USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti. In 1946, a magnitude-8.1 quake struck the Dominican Republic and also shook Haiti, producing a tsunami that killed 1,790 people.

The temblor appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other, said earthquake 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, he said.

"It's going to be a real killer," he said.

The shaking was felt more than 300 miles away in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republican, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A tsunami alert was issued but later canceled

U.S. officials in Haiti reported that all land telephones and cell phones were down in Port-au-Prince, a city of almost 2 million people.

But Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, said from his office in Washington that he was able to speak to Préval’s chief of staff, Fritz Longchamp, just after the quake hit. He said Longchamp told him that “buildings were crumbling right and left” near the national palace.

The State Department said the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince was still functioning. It said the embassy was “currently accounting for staff and attempting to activate the U.S. citizen warden network.”

Offers of help immediately poured in.

In Washington, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. officials to start preparing to deliver humanitarian assistance.

Let's go people, where is your emotion? Where is your compassion? Remember 9/11? Remember Ike and Katrina? It's Haiti, so what, it could have happened here, it could have happened to you, lets have some emotional compassion. This tragedy is huge, the likes that Haiti has never seen in 300 years. It's really really bad, and people really really need to start caring and giving a damn. Pray for the Haitians. Give any support you can. Pray for Haiti.

True, sinkholes don't just happen from too much irrigation. They come from deep down underground. They come from underground rivers.

yes, yes we will respond!! I have 50 cents in my pocket. I can pray for them, though.