|
Refresh page often Live Hourly Updated Feeds...
Wednesday, January 13, 2009
9 25pm Abby Mills from VCACA, Inc., in Virginia says the Organization has set up a disaster relief fund. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti! Send Contributions/Donations to: VCACA, Inc. “Haiti Disaster Relief Fund” At Any Bank of America Account Number: 4350 1452 1580 Tax ID Number: 51-0555200
7pm PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Kellogg Company today announced a $250,000 donation to the American Red Cross to assist with earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. The contribution is being made by Kellogg's Corporate Citizenship Fund, the charitable arm of Kellogg Company. "This disaster has devastated what is already one of the poorest countries in the world," said Dr. Celeste Clark, senior vice president of corporate affairs, Kellogg Company. "The situation for the people of Haiti is dire, and we believe it is critical for us to provide support to relief efforts." For the past year, Kellogg has partnered with a humanitarian organization to provide food in Haiti. Kellogg will work with this organization and others involved in relief efforts to continue to provide food products. In addition, Kellogg will encourage employees and retirees to support relief efforts by providing a dollar-for-dollar match to the American Red Cross.
6 58 UN Ban Ki-Moon has given
an update on the number of UN
casualties in Haiti. He says a total
of 15 UN staff are now confirmed as
dead - 11 Brazilian peacekeepers, as
well as three Jordanians, one
Argentine and one Chadian who were
police officers. Addressing comments
from Haitian President Rene Preval
that the head of the UN mission,
Hedi Annabi, was among the dead, Mr
Ban says: "We have been trying to
confirm this news through our
mission in Haiti and through the
permanent mission of Haiti here. But
neither of these two institutions
have been able to do so."
 6 50pm BENTONVILLE, Ark., Jan. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti, Walmart operations around the world and the Walmart Foundation today announced a $500,000 monetary donation to Red Cross emergency relief efforts in Haiti. The company is also sending pre-packaged food kits valued at $100,000 to Haiti at the request of the Red Cross.  
6 49pm The BBC's Laura
Trevelyan in New York spoke to
Haitians living in the Brooklyn
district of Haiti Town:
"Haitians here are in shock. Their
community has suffered so much -
political violence, hurricanes, and
now this. Rico Dupuis of Radio
Soleil says Haiti is more in need of
help than ever before. 'Of all the
calamities we've faced over the
years, this is the mother of all of
them. Port-au-Prince will never be
the same again. I don't see how
Haiti can recover from all of this,'
he says. Vigils are being organised,
money is being collected, food is
being parcelled up, as Haitians here
respond to this tragedy. What makes
it all the harder to bear, is that
for once people felt their country
was entering a period of relative
stability."
6 32pm Haiti's neighbours in
the Caribbean reacted swiftly to
news of the earthquake, with first
response coming overnight from the
Bahamas and the Dominican Republic
which sent in medical supplies and
search and a rescue response teams.
The new chairman of Caricom,
Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt
Skerrit, called the quake
gut-wrenching. Regional leaders
pledged immediate assistance and a
contingent from the Caribbean
Disasters Emergency Management
Agency was expected to arrive in
Haiti on Wednesday evening.
Grenada's Prime Minister, Tillman
Thomas, told the BBC natural
disasters like hurricanes meant the
region was best placed to understand
Haiti's immediate needs.
6 13pm US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton has decided to
cancel the remainder of her trip to
the Pacific and return to Washington
because of the earthquake in Haiti.
She had been scheduled to visit
Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and
Australia.
Jovenel Presume, Massachusetts,
US, emails: Since the quake, I
have lost all communication with my
family. My mum is there. She was due
to fly back today. I have a few
friends, and family members who are
willing to go out there in the
rubble to search for people that are
still alive.
 
5 44pm Canada's Governor
General, Michaelle Jean, urges her
former compatriots in Haiti to
"stand firm". "Like me, Haitian
communities across Canada are
heartbroken and overwhelmed by the
magnitude of this catastrophe," said
Ms Jean, who was born in
Port-au-Prince, but who fled Haiti
with her family when she was 11.
"The images and news reports are
unbearable to watch. So much
distress, suffering and loss. We are
also, of course, imagining the
worst, situations no image can
capture that only increase our
feeling of helplessness."
 
5 31pm The
BBC's Matthew Price at
Port-au-Prince's airport says:
"We have just touched down. Airport
workers said the situation was very
serious indeed. They did tell me
that there had been no sign of
government help, or of international
help. As we landed, we did see large
numbers of people huddled together
in makeshift shelters."
5 24pm The
US Coast Guard
has posted videos taken from a helicopter during a flight over
Port-au-Prince on Wednesday. They
show the aftermath of the earthquake
and thousands of people on the
capital's streets, but no cars.
5 07pm The Wall Street
Journal says the earthquake will
devastate Haiti's $7bn economy,
which was already struggling to
emerge from several natural
disasters and decades of political
instability. The country, where 80%
of the population lives below the
poverty line, has yet to recover
from four hurricanes in 2008 which
wiped out roughly 15% of its GDP.
"If the hurricanes were a blow, for
this I would have to invent some
other word," Ludovic Comeau, a
native of Haiti and economics
professor at DePaul University,
tells the paper.
5 00pm The commander of the
first US ship to reach
Port-au-Prince has described a scene
of extraordinary devastation, with
collapsed buildings reaching from
the coast into the hills above. Cmdr
Diane Durham of the Coast Guard
cutter, Forward, told the New York
Times: "It is hard to look out in
this harbour and see a building that
has not been affected... Everybody
in this city has been hit."
4 55 The World Bank says it
will provide an additional $100m in
emergency funds to Haiti and is
considering a special reconstruction
trust fund so donors can co-ordinate
aid. "This is a shocking event and
it is crucial that the international
community supports the Haitian
people at this critical time," says
the bank's president, Robert
Zoellick. "The World Bank is
mobilising significant financial
assistance and sending a team to
help assess damage and
reconstruction needs."
4 43 The FBI warns potential
donors of earthquake relief funds to
"apply a critical eye and do their
due diligence before responding to
those requests". "Past tragedies and
natural disasters have prompted
individuals with criminal intent to
solicit contributions purportedly
for a charitable organisation and/or
a good cause," it says.
4 20pm The BBC's Barbara
Plett at the UN in New York says:
"The UN is being extremely cautious
about casualty figures because
information is still sketchy. The
head of mission remains unaccounted
for and the Secretary General, Ban
Ki-moon, is sending the deputy chief
of peacekeeping operations, Edmond
Mulet, to oversee rescue and relief
efforts. An emergency response team
is also expected on the ground
shortly and a flash appeal for funds
will be launched in the next few
days."
4 12pm Susana Malcorra, the
head of the UN department of field
support, confirms that at least 14
UN personnel have been killed -
three Jordanian and 11 Brazilian
peacekeepers, and one Haitian
civilian. Fifty-six are injured,
seven of whom have been evacuated.
She tells reporters that there will
likely be far more fatalities.
3 57pm In a moving report on
its website, Haitian
Radio Metropole
describes the devastation: "The streets of Port-au-Prince are
nothing more than a gaping wound,
where corpses are tangled with the
remains of houses, shops... Schools
and hospitals crumble, people are
buried under the tons of rubble, or
are waiting for a charitable hand
that will come to their aid, and
while this is happening, the looters
are at work in the shops. Some
people have lost their children,
others their parents. Haiti has new
orphans. Today it is very difficult
to maintain hope, but as the saying
goes, hope makes us live, so let us
all join hands and keep hope alive."
3 50 Haiti's President, Rene
Preval, tells CNN he has heard that
between 30,000 and 50,000 people
were killed by the earthquake. He
did not say where the estimates had
come from.
3 44pm A company in Miami
working with the Haitian singer,
Wyclef Jean, to collect donations in
the US via text message says that
the Yele Haiti foundation "has
raised more than $250,000 in
donations for the catastrophe in
less than 12 hours of going live and
aims to raise over $1 million a
day", according to the New York
Times.
3 40pm Officials at
the US Department of Homeland
Security says it has halted the
deportation of Haitians living in
the US illegally. Those who were due
to be deported will remain in US
detention centres.
3 34 The US
televangelist, Pat Robertson, claims
the reason for Haiti's misfortunes
is that the nation "swore a pact to
the devil" two centuries ago. "They
were under the heal of the French...
And they got together and swore a
pact to the devil. They said, we
will serve you if you will get us
free from the French... And they
kicked the French out. You know, the
Haitians revolted and got themselves
free. But ever since they have been
cursed by one thing after the
other," he tells the
Christian
Broadcast Network.
3 21pm President Rene Preval
says the head of the UN mission in
Haiti, Hedi Annabi, was killed in
the earthquake when its headquarters
in Port-au-Prince collapsed. The UN
has yet to confirm the death.
3 05 Paris Hilton, Ben
Stiller, Chris Martin and Lindsay
Lohan are among the celebrities and
artists urging support for victims
of the earthquake in Haiti. Coldplay
singer Martin says that when he
visited Haiti with the charity Oxfam
a few years ago he found a country
"of extreme poverty and brutal
living conditions". The earthquake,
he says, has probably turned
Port-au-Prince "into an unimaginable
hell".
3 59pm The earthquake has
brought devastation to other parts
of Haiti besides Port-au-Prince.
Guido Cornale, a Unicef
representative in the southern city
of Jacmel, says a lot of buildings
that have collapsed completely or
partially. "We are still assessing
the damage but we estimate that
about 20% of Jacmel, if not more...
has been destroyed" he says, adding
that city has a population of
50,000.
2 35pm The BBC's Mike
Wooldridge says: There have been
repeated tragedies of this kind in
Haiti - the first state in the
Caribbean to become independent back
in the 19th Century but also one of
the world's most impoverished
nations. It has a history of
dictatorship, violent power
struggles during the last decade, a
notoriously high level of
criminality - all this has
compounded the vulnerability of
women and children particularly.
That is why there is there is
already a substantial humanitarian
operation in Haiti - facing its
greatest test.
2 10pm The
British Red Cross in Haiti has set
up a
Flickr picture
gallery, showing pictures
taken around Haiti.
2 01pm US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
says she will shorten her trip to
Asia because of the earthquake. "It
is biblical, the tragedy that
continues to stalk Haiti and the
Haitian people," she tells reporters
in Hawaii, according to the AFP news
agency.
1 58pm Edwidge Danticat, an
award-winning Haitian-American
author based in Miami, tells the
Associated Press she is unable to
contact her relatives. "You want to
go there, but you just have to
wait," she says. "Life is already so
fragile in Haiti, and to have this
on such a massive scale, it's
unimaginable how the country will be
able to recover from this."
1 49 The Caribbean Community
(Caricom) says its member states are
"ready to assist our brothers and
sisters" in Haiti. "While we are
very encouraged by the many
expressions of international support
that are already pouring in to
Haiti, Caricom as a region also
intends to play its part," it says,
according to the Caribbean Media
Corporation.
1 39 Canadian diplomats are
racing to get help to a Canadian
citizen trapped in the rubble in
Haiti who managed to send out a text
message to the foreign ministry's
operations centre in Ottawa, Foreign
Minister Lawrence Cannon says. "We
know exactly where that individual
is," he adds. Mr Cannon says there
have so far been no reports of any
Canadian casualties.
1 28pm Between 115 and 200 UN
expatriate personnel in Haiti are
still missing, a spokeswoman for the
Office for the Co-ordination of
Humanitarian Affairs tells the AFP
news agency. "We are also very
worried about our local staff,"
Elisabeth Byrs says.
1 17 Meinie Nicolai, director
of operations at Medecins Sans
Frontieres in Brussels, tells the
BBC World Service that three of its
health centres in Haiti have been
partially destroyed. "Up till now we
have received just fewer than 1,000
people. Some even came to our office
building to be cared for. We are
seeing patients with fractures and
trauma. The situation is dramatic
and chaotic. We don't know how many
are wounded and dead but the
situation is serious… We are flying
in 80 tonnes of extra material with
an inflatable hospital... There are
plenty of problems," she says.
1 08pm The UN's Emergency
Relief Co-ordinator, John Holmes,
says a Chinese search and rescue
team has arrived in Port-au-Prince.
Teams are also on their way from the
US, France, Iceland and the
Dominican Republic. "Help is
beginning to arrive, but of course
it is desperately needed and as you
are all aware every hour counts in
this kind of situation where people
are trapped under the rubble and
desperately in need of being
rescued," he says.
12 56pm UK Foreign Office
Minister, Baroness Kinnock, says
officials working hard to locate and
contact British nationals in Haiti
and that the UK is ready to work
with the Haitian government and
international partners to respond to
the crisis. "We are in close contact
with our honorary consul in
Port-au-Prince. Despite major
communications challenges, she is
working hard to help locate British
nationals and provide further
information on the situation on the
ground. At present, we have no
reports of any British casualties,"
she says.
12 50 Mister Berube, a
Canadian living in Haiti, tells the
BBC World Service what happened to
his hotel: "I was in my office
checking out some paperwork and the
whole building felt like a boat in a
storm. We ran out of the doors and
saw clouds of dust all over the
place. Everyone managed to get out.
We were so nervous we stayed outside
all night without gas and
electricity. I have some neighbours
who have lost everything. We are not
used to waiting for emergency help -
in Haiti we usually try to sort out
emergencies ourselves."
12 40 The BBC's Nick
Caistor says: Haiti appears to
have had more than its fair share of
chaos, poverty and natural
disasters. And, as has happened so
often in the nation's past, just
when the situation was getting
better, a fresh catastrophe struck.
12 33 US Agency for
International Development (USAID)
administrator Rajiv Shah says
Washington is "committed to a
significant effort". "We will be
pushing forward with an aggressive
and co-ordinated effort focused very
much on saving lives through
aggressive search and rescue in the
urban environment for the next 72
hours, which will be our primary
focus of our engagement," he tells
reporters.
melindayiti
tweets: talking to Joe in
Jacmel...says the city is destroyed,
the Alcibiade is missing a part, the
Hotel Lamandou... many places
damaged... the hospital also
seriously damaged and turning people
away...the ocean receded a half mile
from the coast
12 23pm Haiti's Prime
Minister, Jean Max Bellerive, tells
CNN that the death toll could be
"well over 100,000". "I hope that is
not true, because I hope the people
had the time to get out. Because we
have so many people on the streets
right now, we don't know exactly
where they were living. But so many,
so many buildings, so many
neighbourhoods totally destroyed,
and some neighbourhoods we don't
even see people, so I don't know
where those people are," he says.
12 07pm The US state
department says it has ordered about
80 non-essential embassy personnel,
as well as dependents to leave
Haiti, so the mission can focus on
helping victims of the earthquake.
11 56am Pope Benedict XVI
appeals for support for those
affected by the earthquake and says
the Catholic Church will
"immediately activate" it charitable
institutions to reach those in need.
"I appeal to everyone's generosity,
so that these brothers and sisters
of ours who are living through a
time of need and pain receive our
concrete solidarity and the
effective help of the international
community," he says.
11 51am The UN says the main
prison in Port-au-Prince has
collapsed, according to the
Associated Press. Inmates have
reportedly escaped.
11 46am According to the New
Scientist magazine, a group of
scientists from the US and Jamaica
predicted in 2008 that a
magnitude-7.2 earthquake would
result if all of the strain along
the
Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault
zone in southern Haiti
was
"released in a
single event" . Tuesday's
earthquake was 7.0. Paul Mann, who
was one of the scientists who gave
the warning, said Haiti was
particularly vulnerable to
earthquake damage because many
people lived in poorly constructed
housing on steep slopes.
11 30am Navy ships on the US
East Coast are preparing to leave
for Haiti, officials tell the
Reuters news agency.
11 26am Bob Poff, disaster
co-ordinator for the
Salvation Army
in Haiti tells the New York Times
that after the earthquake "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, hoping
to find medical attention. All of
them were older, scared, bleeding,
and terrified. All of the children,
and hundreds of neighbours, are
sleeping in our playground area
tonight. Occasionally, there is
another tremor - another reminder
that we are not yet finished with
this calamity. And when it comes,
all of the people cry out and the
children are terrified," he says.
11 23 Haiti's First Lady,
Elisabeth Preval, tells the Miami
Herald: "This is a catastrophe. I'm
stepping over dead bodies. A lot of
people are buried under buildings.
The general hospital has collapsed.
We need support. We need help. We
need engineers."
11 18 The European Commission
has approved 3m euros ($4.37m) of
emergency funding for the
international aid effort in Haiti
and could pledge more in coming
days, a spokeswoman says.
11 15am Fabienne de Leval of
Medecins Sans Frontieres tells the
BBC that its personnel in Haiti are
trying to work out what needs to be
done. "They've been assessing the
situation, they've been going around
the medical structures in town to
see if they're functional. There's a
lot of damaged buildings, the people
in the streets are afraid to go back
into their houses because of the
aftershocks. There are many dead
bodies around. It's still very
difficult to assess the extent of
the damage and how many victims
there will be," he says.
11 09 The US military is
sending a ground assessment team to
Haiti and one of its P-3 Orion
patrol aircraft has been doing
aerial reconnaissance, a Pentagon
spokesman has said, according to the
Reuters news agency.
10 58am Mr Nesirky says the
3,000 UN peacekeepers based in and
around Port-au-Prince are "securing
the airport, securing the port, and
securing the main arteries so that
aid can get through as well as
search-and-rescue workers".
"Additionally, they will be
patrolling to ensure that security
is maintained," he says.
10 55 Martin Nesirky,
spokesman for UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon, tells the BBC World
Service that many UN personnel are
still missing. "The Christopher
Hotel, which was the headquarters
for our peacekeeping operation,
collapsed in the quake and there are
many people still trapped inside.
The special representative for the
secretary general, Hedi Annabi, and
his deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa,
are unaccounted for, as are many
other staff," he says.
10 50 The Haitian ambassador
to the Organisation of American
States (OAS) tells the AFP news
agency that there are "tens of
thousands of victims and
considerable damage".
10 41am President Barack
Obama says US search-and-rescue
teams from Florida, Virginia and
California will arrive in Haiti
throughout Wednesday and Thursday.
"The people of Haiti will have the
full support of the United States in
the urgent effort to rescue those
trapped beneath the rubble and to
deliver the humanitarian relief,
food, water and medicine that
Haitians will need," he adds.
10 36am Susan Westwood, a
pediatric nurse from Scotland
working at an orphanage outside
Port-au-Prince, tells the BBC that
they only have enough supplies to
last five days. "It is what happens
to us after that, that is concerning
us," she says. "We are having to
very careful with food and water."
10 35am At least 11 Brazilian
peacekeepers were killed, Brazil's
military has said, according to the
AFP news agency.
10 32am Among those trapped
inside the parliament building but
still alive is the president of the
Haitian Senate, Kely Bastien, Mr
Preval tells the Miami Herald.
10 31 In his first interview
since the earthquake, Haitian
President Rene Preval tells the
Miami Herald a full evaluation is
necessary before a realistic
estimate of casualties can be made.
But he says: "All of the hospitals
are packed with people. It is a
catastrophe... There are a lot of
schools that have a lot of dead
people in them."
10 26 Mr Obama says the
reports and images he has seen from
Haiti are "truly heart-wrenching"
and that the world must prepared for
difficult days ahead as it learns of
the scale of the disaster.
10 22am US President Barack
Obama says he has directed his
administration to respond with a
"swift, co-ordinated and aggressive"
aid effort to save lives in Haiti.
10 14 Haiti's President, Rene
Preval, tells the
Miami Herald
that he believes thousands of people
have been killed, and that the scene
in Port-au-Prince is "unimaginable",
with parliament, schools and
hospitals destroyed.
10 08 The Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Port-au-Prince,
Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, was
among those killed in the
earthquake, missionaries and priests
have said. The Missionary
International Service News Agency
(MISNA) reported that his body had
been pulled from the rubble of his
offices in the capital.
10 04 International aid
agency
Cafod
pledges £100,000 to assist with the
relief effort.
9 51am Maggie Boyer, of the
relief agency
World Vision,
tells the BBC she witnessed the
devastation in Port-au-Prince
minutes after the quake. "Many
buildings in the city have high
walls, for security reasons, and
many of those walls had crumbled
into the streets," she said. "We saw
apartment buildings and a major
supermarket that had given way. Many
people here are just shocked."
9 46am Carelp has posted some
pictures on
CNN showing the aftermath
of the quake in Petion-Ville, Haiti.
UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy
says Port-au-Prince airport is
"operational" and aid will start
flowing soon, AFP news agency
reports.
9 39 A seismologist from the
British
Geological Survey, Dr
Roger Musson, tells the BBC World
Service the fault line Haiti sits on
had been "gradually accumulating
energy over the last 250 years and
finally released it all in one big
earthquake". He said the energy "had
to be released at some point" but it
could have happened in a series of
smaller tremors. "It was a big one
and I'm afraid this is a real
disaster."
9 33am Canada is sending a
plane with medical equipment and a
substantial relief and rescue force
- AFP news agency
9 32 The
International
Monetary Fund is
mustering an all-out aid effort to
help Haiti as soon as possible, IMF
chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn says,
according to AFP.
9 23am Frank Thorp, a US
citizen in Haiti, told
The Early Show
on CBS he drove 161km (100 miles) to
Port-au-Prince after the earthquake
to rescue his wife Jillian, an aid
worker, from the rubble of their
home. He said he dug for more than
an hour to free her and a co-worker
from beneath 1ft (0.3 metres) of
concrete.
9 18am The BBC has created a
Twitter link,
where you can follow tweets from
Haiti.
9 12am Emerson Tan, at
London's Gatwick airport, e-mails:I'm
part of a team of volunteer aid
workers trying to get to Haiti.
There are four of us from my group,
Mapaction,
and over 70 rescue specialists. The
sniffer dogs are here as well. My
group provides mapping and
information for all the aid
agencies. Haiti is extremely poor
and a lot of its buildings are badly
constructed. Strangely though, the
shacks are where more people are
likely to survive. The building
materials are lightweight and
survivors can get out more easily.
9 10 Reports from another
city in Haiti, Jacmel, say the
earthquake has also caused great
destruction there. A representative
of Unicef in the city, Guido Cornale,
told the BBC World Service that at
least 20% of buildings had been
destroyed in the city of 50,000
inhabitants. He said up to 5,000
people had gone to Jacmel airport
looking for shelter.
9 03am The UN peacekeeping
chief Alain Le Roy says "less than
five" UN staff had been found dead
at the organisation's headquarters
in Port-au-Prince but many are still
believed to be in the rubble. The UN
has not confirmed reports that their
head of operations in Haiti, Hedi
Annabi, was killed.
8 58am US President Barack
Obama will make a statement on the
Haiti disaster at 1500 GMT (1000
EST), says the White House.
8 55 Susan Westwood, a
paediatric nurse from Scotland
working at an orphanage outside
Port-au-Prince, e-mails: "I was
in the intensive care room looking
after a nine-month-old baby girl
when the earthquake hit. The floor
started shaking violently and the
whole building shook from side to
side. It lasted about 45 seconds.
After that, there was a constant
shuddering. The babies were really
frightened and started to cry. Other
staff and carers were screaming,
they were so terrified. It was very
upsetting."
8 51 Renzo Fricke, emergency
co-ordinator for
Medecins Sans
Frontieres, tells the
BBC World
Service: "We have treated
hundreds of patients that were
wounded…these patients that have
arrived have mostly trauma,
fractures and burns. None of them
[the hospitals] are functional. They
are either collapsed, or without
staff or without medicine."
8 45 The BBC's Imogen
Foulkes in Geneva says: The
first 48 hours following an
earthquake are crucial to saving
lives but with roads blocked and
nearly all communication lines down
it is extremely difficult to assess
the situation. Some aid agencies
don't yet know if their own staff
and buildings are safe.
8 40 UN chief Ban Ki-moon
says the UN is mobilising an
emergency response team and
releasing $10m (£6m) from its
emergency relief fund for victims of
the Haiti quake.
8 34 Ezili Danto, a
Haitian human rights lawyer in the
US, blogs:All the poor living on
the mountains, in houses built on
the mountains, are feared to have
suffered heavy, heavy casualty. Our
report is that these houses on the
mountains tumbled down, one on top
another.
8 28 UNSecretary General Ban
Ki-moon says the earthquake has had
a "devastating impact" on
Port-au-Prince but that other areas
of Haiti are largely unaffected. "We
are yet to establish the number of
dead or injured, which we fear may
well be in the hundreds. There is no
doubt that we are facing a major
humanitarian emergency and a major
relief effort will be required," he
tells a news conference in New York.
1320 British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown says the UK will give
Haiti "whatever humanitarian
assistance is required" and Spain,
which currently hold the EU
presidency, says the union is
"taking all necessary measures to
mitigate the damage". Germany has
offered 1m euro ($1.5m: £894,000) in
aid.
7 57am All telephone lines
were reported to be down for hours
following the quake, but Haitian
radio reporter Carel Pedre tells
CNN
one of the main networks, Digicel,
is back up and running.
7 53am Unicef tells the BBC
that half of Haiti's population are
children under the age of 18.
7 49am International aid
charities are appealing for help for
the victims. Here are some of the
ways you can help.
In the UK: British Red Cross, Christian Aid, Oxfam In the US: Mercy Corps, American Red Cross, Unicef USA These organisations also have
ways to donate: We will keep you updated with relief efforts as the information comes in.
7 45am Wyclef tweets: "I am
on my way to the DR [Dominican
Republic] to get to Haiti. Please
urge your councilmen, governors etc
we need a state of emergency for
Haiti."
7 28 Eyewitness Dixie Bickel
tells the BBC World Service there
are people buried under their houses
who cannot escape.
7 12 French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner says the head of
the UN mission in Haiti is feared to
have died when the UN building
collapsed. "We know nothing about
what's happened to the people who
lived there," the AFP news agency
quotes Mr Kouchner as saying.
7am Several UN international
peacekeepers are reported to be
among the dead, including people
from Brazil and Jordan.
6:53 Red Cross spokesman Paul
Conneally tells the BBC that relief
efforts are being hampered by
"massive damage" to the
infrastructure in Haiti. "We're
looking at supporting search and
rescue operations and supplementing
emergency health services," he says.
6:45 BBC correspondents in
the Dominican Republic and Jamaica
say tremors were felt in both
countries. The Prime Minister of the
Bahamas, Hubert Ingraham, says some
islands have been hit by high tides.
His country's emergency services are
ready to help Haiti, the Caribbean
Media Corporation quotes him as
saying.
6:36 Rapper Wyclef Jean, who
was born in Haiti, tells CNN he was
on the phone to a friend in the
country when the quake struck. "She
said she was outside with her kids
and that the buildings have started
collapsing," he says.
6:32 Caroline Hurford of the
World Food Program (WFP) said the
agency's building in Port-Au-Prince
was still standing and all staff are
accounted for. WFP is airlifting 90
metric tonnes of high energy
biscuits to neighboring Dominican
Republic - enough to feed 30,000
people for a week.
6:24 Reports
say the capital, Port-au-Prince, was
covered in a blanket of dust for
about 20 minutes after the quake.
6:22am Louis Belanger, a
spokesman for UK-based aid agency
Oxfam, tells the BBC aid agencies
will probably use the Dominican
Republic's capital Santo Domingo as
their hub to bring in aid as Haiti's
main airport is out of action.
6:13 Pope Benedict XVI calls
on people to "unite in prayer" for
the victims of the quake.
6:08 "This is a huge
humanitarian operation, no question
about that," Patrick McCormick of
the UN's children's agency Unicef
tells the BBC.
6:01 Former Haitian President
Jean Bertrand Aristide is quoted by
the AFP news agency as saying the
earthquake is "a tragedy that defies
expression".
5:53 The International
Federation of the Red Cross says up
to three million people have been
affected by the quake.
WEDNESDAY 5:40am
Hundreds of people are feared to
have died after a powerful
earthquake hit south of the Haitian
capital, Port-au-Prince.
Infrastructure in the country has
been severely damaged and many
buildings have been destroyed.
Reports are emerging of chaos and
panic as aftershocks continue.
|
||||||||||||||
7.0
Catastrophic Earthquake Hits Haiti -
Hundreds of Thousands Feared Dead 
Caribbean
Headline News....
www.walmartstores.com/haiti
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
http://www.yele.org/
• UNICEF
• C.A.R.E.
• SAVE THE CHILDREN
• INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS
• RED CROSS
• UNITED NATIONS CENTRAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND
STATE DEPT VICTIMS FAMILY HOTLINE
888-407-4747
To help with relief efforts,
text "HAITI" to "90999" and $10 will be given automatically to
the Red Cross, charged to your cell phone bill.
Visit
Impact Your World
for more ways to help
http://www.yele.org/
• UNICEF
• C.A.R.E.
• SAVE THE CHILDREN
• INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS
• RED CROSS
• UNITED NATIONS CENTRAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE FUND
888-407-4747
www.walmartstores.com/haiti
Two Women Dead Following High Speed Chase In Jamaica
Haiti 'Orphans' Found With Americans May Have Parents
Girl pulled out alive 15 days after Haiti quake
Haiti President Makes Urgent Plea For Tents
PAM Announces Amnesty for Illegal Residents in St Kitts & Nevis