7.0 Quake Hits Haiti

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Huge swaths of Haiti’s capital lay in ruins on Wednesday and thousands of people were feared dead, with untold others buried in the rubble of government buildings, foreign aid headquarters and shantytowns that collapsed a day earlier in a massive earthquake.

The Haitian president, René Préval, told The Miami Herald that the toll was “unimaginable” and estimated that thousands had died. Among those feared dead were the chief of the United Nations mission in Haiti and Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval was quoted as saying. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

“All of the hospitals are packed with people,” he added. “It is a catastrophe." .

The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years and left the country in a shambles, without electricity or phone service, tangling efforts to provide relief to an estimated 3 million people whom the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said had been affected by the quake.

“There are massive, massive, massive challenges,” said Paul Conneally, a spokesman for the agency.

The Associated Press reported that the Port-au-Prince airport had opened, but that the main road connecting it to the capital remained impassable. Other roads had been torn apart in the quake or were blocked by debris, making it more difficult to transport food, fresh water and first aid supplies, and hospitals were overwhelmed by the injured. In a place where there are constant blackouts, the electricity remained out during the early hours Wednesday, and telephones were not working.

More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled Haiti through the night and into the early morning, according to Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,” she said.

Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS . . . Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”

A hospital collapsed in Pétionville, a hillside district in Port-au-Prince that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, a videographer for The Associated Press said. An American government official also reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.

Tequila Minsky, a photographer who was in Port-au-Prince, said a wall at the front of the Hotel Oloffson had fallen, killing a passer-by. A number of nearby buildings had crumbled, trapping people, she said, and a Unibank bank building was badly damaged. People were screaming.

“It was general mayhem,” Ms. Minsky said.

“The main issue here will probably be shaking,” he said, “and this is an area that is particularly vulnerable in terms of construction practice, and with a high population density. There could be a high number of casualties.”

Oxfam, the antipoverty group, said that Kristie van de Wetering, a former employee based in Port-au-Prince, had described houses in rubble everywhere.

Haiti sits on a large fault that has caused catastrophic quakes in the past, but this one was described as among the most powerful to hit the region. With many poor residents living in tin-roof shacks that sit precariously on steep ravines and with much of the construction in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in the country of questionable quality, the expectation was that the quake caused major damage to buildings and significant loss of life.

Haiti’s many man-made woes — its dire poverty, political infighting and proclivity for insurrection — have been exacerbated repeatedly by natural disasters. At the end of 2008, four hurricanes flooded whole towns, knocked out bridges and left a destitute population in even more desperate conditions.

Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, said in an interview on CNN that he had little information about the extent of damage but said the suffering inflicted on the was likely to be “catastrophic.”

Mr. Joseph said that the one official he had reached — identified by The Associated Press as President Rene Préval’s chief of staff, Fritz Longchamp — told him that houses had crumbled “on the right side of the street and the left side of the street.”

Elsie St. Louis-Accilien, the director of the Haitian Americans United for Progress in Queens, said that she was able to reach the director of Ofatma hospital, in Port-au-Prince. “They are trapped inside,” Ms. St. Louis-Accilien said in a telephone interview. “They were pretty shaken, but they were relieved to be alive.”

She said that the director said that there was “a lot of smoke, a lot of dust,” and that her phone has been ringing nonstop. “People are calling me, elected officials are calling, asking what we can do.”