By William Branigin, Debbi Wilgoren and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 13, 2010; 2:30 PM
Relief workers in Haiti were preparing Wednesday to deal with thousands of dead and injured in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, as foreign governments and international aid organizations mobilized to send assistance to the impoverished Caribbean nation.
With untold numbers of people trapped under rubble a day after the 7.0 magnitude quake struck the capital, Port-au-Prince, Haitians tried desperately to dig them out by hand, witnesses said. The beleaguered Haitian government appeared paralyzed, evidently unable to mount any significant rescue effort on its own.
"It's the disaster of the century" for Haiti, Karel Zelenka, director of Catholic Relief Services in Port-au-Prince, told U.S. colleagues in an e-mail Wednesday morning. "We should be prepared for thousands and thousands of dead and injured."
U.N. officials also said the number of dead could easily reach into the thousands.
In Washington, a White House national security official told Haitian activists Wednesday afternoon that three Americans have been confirmed killed in the quake.
Zelenka said there were "no rescue efforts whatsoever" by the government early Wednesday morning and that everything was being done "by individuals with bare hands." He added that he had not seen "any movement of rescue vehicles," such as ambulances. "People are in shock," he said.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, officials told reporters that heavy equipment, search personnel and medical teams were urgently needed in the nation of 9 million, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said emergency workers had made little progress overnight and urged the United States and other foreign governments to mount a massive international relief effort.
"Basic services such as water and electricity have collapsed almost entirely," Ban said. "Medical facilities have been inundated with injured."
U.N. officials said unknown numbers of people are believed trapped in collapsed buildings -- including scores thought to be buried in the rubble of the hotel that had served as Haiti's U.N. headquarters.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, interviewed on CNN, estimated the death toll in the "hundreds of thousands," but it was unclear how he arrived at the figure. He cited the density of the capital's vast slums, which he said had largely collapsed.
In an interview with the Miami Herald, Haitian President René Préval described "unimaginable" scenes in Port-au-Prince. "Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," he said. "There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them." He said the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince is among the dead and that the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, Tunisian diplomat Hedi Annabi, is missing.
Vincenzo Pugliese, deputy spokesman for the U.N. Mission in Haiti, said in a statement read in New York that the national palace, the Ministry of Justice, other government buildings, hotels, hospitals, schools and the national penitentiary "have all suffered extensive damage."
"Casualties, which are vast, can only be estimated," Vincenzo Pugliese, deputy spokesman for the U.N. Mission in Haiti, said in a statement. "An unknown number, tens if not hundreds of thousands, have suffered varying degrees of destruction to their homes." He said many areas are without water and electricity and that "major transport routes have been severely disrupted" by debris, smashed vehicles and cracks in the earth.
"As we speak, there are still over 100 people unaccounted for under the rubble" of the Christopher Hotel, Alain Le Roy, the top U.N. peacekeeping official, told reporters in New York. "We don't know their fate. Some people have been extracted but only less than 10 for the time being. Some dead, some alive."
The United Nations also reported that the main prison in Port-au-Prince collapsed and that some inmates escaped.
Many other major buildings, such as the Hotel Montana, the presidential palace, Parliament and the National Cathedral, were in ruins, residents said.
"These are very sturdy buildings," said Raymond Alcide Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to the United States. "If those buildings are damaged, can you imagine what has happened to all these flimsy abodes" in other parts of the city?
The United States, France, China and the Dominican Republic are all sending search and rescue teams to Haiti, the United Nations said. A U.S. military official said tentative plans are underway for the hospital ship USNS Comfort -- which aided Haiti after hurricanes struck Port-au-Prince two years ago -- to dock off the coast and assist the sick and wounded.
At the White House, President Obama pledged that his administration would "respond with a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives" in the aftermath of what he called an "especially cruel and incomprehensible tragedy."
Obama said military planes have flown over the area to assess quake damage and search and rescue teams from Fairfax County, Va., Florida and California are due to arrive Wednesday and Thursday. Acknowledging that many Americans are experiencing tough economic times, Obama nevertheless urged people to donate to Haitians affected by the quake.
"We have to be there for them in their hour of need," he said.
After discussing the situation with Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters traveling with her overseas that she has decided to "compress" but not cancel her trip to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia.
Air Force Gen. Douglas M. Fraser, head of the U.S. Southern Command, said the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, based at Norfolk, Va., is steaming toward Haiti and is scheduled to arrive Thursday afternoon. He said the carrier will take on helicopters and provisions as it heads south. In addition, a large amphibious ship is "another day or two away" from Haiti and is expected to carry an expeditionary unit of roughly 2,000 Marines, Fraser said.
Cheryl D. Mills, the chief of staff at the State Department, said about 45,000 U.S. citizens live in Haiti and that the U.S. Embassy there was trying to contact them. "We've received a number of reports of injured U.S. citizens," she told reporters. Of the 172 embassy personnel in Haiti, she said, "almost all" are accounted for. At least eight have been injured, four of them seriously, and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters are evacuating them, Mills said.
She said the department has ordered the evacuation of about 80 nonessential U.S. personnel -- such as spouses and children of embassy employees -- who are expected to leave on Coast Guard aircraft Wednesday afternoon. The embassy building itself has remained intact, she said.
Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the overall coordinator of U.S. relief efforts for Haiti, said two urban search-and-rescue teams are on their way, each with 72 people and "significant" equipment. He said the U.S. effort is focused on saving lives during the first 72 hours after the earthquake.
The quake was centered about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million people. News reports from the capital said survivors were piling bodies of the dead outside as the sun rose Wednesday morning. But with communications networks crippled across the country, there were no firm estimates of the number of fatalities or wounded.
Bob Poff, director of disaster services for the Salvation Army in Haiti, said much of the organization's compound was badly damaged, although the Children's Home was intact. Poff, who was traveling in a truck when the quake struck, wrote in a message to his colleagues that the vehicle was "being tossed to and fro like a toy."
"I looked out the windows to see buildings 'pancaking' down," Poff wrote. "Thousands of people poured out into the streets, crying, carrying bloody bodies, looking for anyone who could help them. We piled as many bodies into the back of our truck, and took them down the hill with us. . . . All of them were older, scared, bleeding, and terrified."
At U.N. headquarters in Port-au-Prince, the unaccounted-for personnel included Hedi Annabi, a Tunisian who as special envoy to Haiti oversees the 12,000 international and Haitian U.N. employees in the country, officials said. Annabi was meeting with a Chinese delegation in the hotel when the earthquake struck at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday; no one who was in the meeting has been located, officials said.
Media reports said eight Chinese U.N. peacekeepers and at least four Brazilian peacekeepers were killed in the quake, with many others missing.
Officials said the Port-au-Prince airport, which lost its control tower during the earthquake, is now able to receive relief flights, but pilots were on their own in coordinating landings with each other.
Le Roy, of the United Nations, said the organization's main logistics base, with stores of water and rations, was also functioning and that 3,000 U.N. peacekeepers had secured the airport and were patrolling the streets in Port-au-Prince.
John Holmes, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the chief U.N. relief agencies -- such as the World Food Program and the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) -- were relatively unscathed by the earthquake and would be in a fairly good position to mount relief operations on the ground.
"My own staff there, they are okay, they're safe, reasonably intact," Holmes said, adding that the World Food Program was flying in 90 metric tons of biscuits for displaced earthquake victims. "We can kick-start the operation."
Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to the United States, said he had spoken with first lady Elisabeth Debrosse Delatour, who said she and President Préval were unharmed. Many government workers had already left their offices for the day, he added, and therefore survived the collapse of government buildings.
But Joseph said Delatour told him that "most of Port-au-Prince . . . is destroyed." In addition to the rescue teams, the United States will send up to 48 tons of rescue equipment. The Coast Guard said Tuesday night that it was preparing to deploy cutters and aircraft to deliver aid as needed.
Associated Press reporters who toured Port-au-Prince described scenes of severe and widespread damage and casualties. They saw women covered in dust clawing out of debris and wailing. Stunned people wandered the streets holding hands, they said, while many gravely injured people sat in the streets, pleading for doctors. Witnesses reported a series of strong aftershocks. Thousands of people gathered in public squares late into the night, singing hymns and weeping.
"People are out in the streets, crying, screaming, shouting," Zelenka, the CRS director, said Tuesday night. "They see the extent of the damage," he said, but could do little to rescue people trapped under rubble because night had fallen.
Zelenka reported that poorly constructed shantytowns and other buildings had crumbled in huge clouds of dust. Near the CRS headquarters, a supermarket was "completely razed," he said, and a gasoline station and a church were reduced to rubble. Among the worst-hit areas was the impoverished Carrefour section of Port-au-Prince near the sea.
In the wealthier Petionville part of the city, where diplomats and well-off Haitians live in hillside homes, a hospital was wrecked and houses had tumbled into a ravine, according to the Associated Press.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said embassy officials had begun trying to contact as many as possible of the Americans living in the city but were hampered by a lack of communication and by roads that were impassable. About 45,000 Americans live in Haiti, officials said.
"Haiti is one of the poorest countries on Earth, and clearly the most challenged in our hemisphere," Crowley said Tuesday. "We are standing by to provide whatever assistance we can," he said.
Staff writer Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.
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