7.0 earthquake hits Haiti
Posted Jan 12, 2010 9:18 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The strongest earthquake in more than 200 years rocked Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital and heavily damaging the National Palace, U.N. peacekeeper headquarters and other buildings.
U.S. officials reported bodies in the streets and an aid official described “total disaster and chaos.”
United Nations officials said a large number of U.N. personnel were unaccounted for.
Communications were widely disrupted, making it impossible to get a full picture of damage as powerful aftershocks shook a desperately poor country where many buildings are flimsy.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington that embassy personnel were “literally in the dark” after power failed.
The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centred about 10 miles (15 kilometres) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometres), the U.S. Geological Survey said.
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.
