More than 100,000 feared dead in horrific Haiti quake
More than 100,000 people were feared dead in Haiti Wednesday after an
earthquake decimated the capital Port-au-Prince, where survivors faced a
second night on streets still littered with the dead.
Schools, hotels, hospitals and the presidential palace lay in ruins
and people pleaded for help as they lay trapped beneath mountains of
concrete, and the capital was “mostly destroyed” an AFP correspondent
said.
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The offices of MSF in the Petion Ville neighborhood of
Port-Au-Prince, which has been transformed into a makeshift
hospital after a cataclysmic earthquake struck Haiti the
previous day. Casualty figures were impossible to calculate,
but Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final
death toll from the 7.0 quake could be “well over 100,000.”
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Mournful songs and prayers rose above the dust and debris-cloaked
city of two million people as darkness descended.
Dusk saw horrific scenes of the injured laying in the back of pick-up
trucks which normally ferry residents through the city’s thronged
streets.
A dead victim was pinned between the fallen roof of her home and her
bed, and rescuers tore at the wreckage of a children’s hospital with
their bare hands.
Jeanwell Antoine held a trapped baby’s arm and sought to comfort it
as he clawed through the rubble. “It is not me who is pushing back this
earth. It is the hand of God, who loves life and is guiding me so I can
save this baby,” he said.
With every hour crucial for those trapped, a global aid operation
swung into action, with rescue teams bringing heavy lifting gear and
desperately-needed medicines and food.
Casualty figures were impossible to calculate, but Prime Minister
Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final death toll from the 7.0 quake
could be “well over 100,000.” President Rene Preval told the network
50,000 could be dead.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the tragedy to the
Asian tsunami which killed more than 220,000 people five years ago.
“The Indian Ocean tsunami was such a terrible tragedy and with such
high loss of life. This will be a very high loss of life as well,” she
said.
Preval, unsure of where he would sleep after his home and the
presidential palace were destroyed, painted a scene of utter
devastation.
“Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have
collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed,” he told the Miami Herald.
With thousands of people missing, dazed survivors in torn clothes
wandered through the rubble as more than 30 aftershocks rocked the
ramshackle and impoverished capital.
Dust filled the air, scattered fires broke out, and injured people
slumped on the blood-soaked floor of one clinic waiting for treatment.
Elsewhere, outside a field hospital, mothers huddled with shell-shocked
children. Port-Au-Prince, AFP
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