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. Electricity was out in some places.
“He reported that it was just total disaster and chaos, that there were clouds of dust surrounding Port-au-Prince,” Fajardo said from the group’s offices in Maryland.
“Contacts with the UN on the ground have been severely hampered,” Le Roy said in a statement, adding: “For the moment, a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for.”
An Associated Press videographer saw the wrecked hospital in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, as well as many poor people. Elsewhere in the capital, U.S. government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.
The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 5 miles (8 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said. Kristin Marano USGS geophysicist called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti. In 1946, a magnitude-8.1 quake struck the Dominican Republic and Haiti also shook, producing a tsunami that killed 1.790 people.
Tuesday’s quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, Which shares a border with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, and some panicked residents in the capital of Santo Domingo Fled from their homes shaking. But no major damage was reported there.
