BF2S Forums More than 100,000 feared dead in Haiti quake, officials say

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Officials fear more than 100,000 people have died as a result of Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti.

The capital, Port-au-Prince, "is flattened," said Haiti's consul general to the U.N., Felix Augustin, who said he believed more than 100,000 people were dead. Hospitals are gone, and medical supplies and heavy equipment are desperately needed, he said.

The country's prime minister said the death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands.

"I hope that is not true, because I hope the people had the time to get out," Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN.

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President Rene Preval said he heard reports of death tolls ranging from 30,000 to 100,000 -- but he said the true toll is not yet known.

Thousands of injured people waited for care outside badly damaged hospitals, while an unknown number remained trapped inside collapsed buildings. Basic services like water and electricity were out, and Preval said his government needs help clearing streets so rescuers can reach some of the hardest-hit areas.

"We need some hospitals, some medicine and some doctors," Preval said.

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CNN correspondents in Port-au-Prince and its suburbs reported whole blocks of collapsed buildings, with dozens of bodies piled in the streets.

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, centered about 10 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It could be felt strongly in eastern Cuba, more than 200 miles away.

The earthquake's power matched that of several nuclear bombs, said Roger Searle, a professor of geophysics in the Earth Sciences Department at Durham University in England. He said the combination of its magnitude and geographical shallowness made it particularly dangerous.

About 3 million people -- one-third of Haiti's population -- were affected by the quake, the Red Cross said. About 10 million people felt shaking from the earthquake, including 2 million who felt severe trembling, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated.

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Governments and agencies across the globe geared up to help, including rescue teams from China, Iceland and France, Haiti's onetime colonial ruler; aid flights and 3 million euros ($4.35 million) from Spain; doctors from Cuba; and a field hospital from Russia.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations plans to release $10 million in aid immediately, while the World Bank pledged another $100 million Wednesday afternoon.

President Obama said the U.S. would have a "swift, coordinated and aggressive" response.

"The reports and images that we've seen of collapsed hospitals, crumbled homes and men and women carrying their injured neighbors through the streets are truly heart-wrenching," Obama said.

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Former President Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, appealed to the public to support programs that will provide food, water, shelter and medical supplies to the impoverished country.

"The most important thing you can do is not to send those supplies, but to send cash" to relief agencies, Clinton said.

Clinton also urged international leaders to fulfill their previous donor commitments to Haiti.

"Most countries are way behind on fulfilling it. ... If you can provide any emergency help, if you can give us helicopters or basic medical supplies -- we need that," Clinton said.

The United States has been heavily involved in Haiti commercially, politically and militarily for most of the past century. The U.S. military is working to get ground and air assessments of the damage, with Coast Guard cutters, airplanes and choppers deploying to the scene, and Navy ships preparing to leave.

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Numerous relief organizations were already working in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, when the quake struck Tuesday afternoon. Aid groups scrambled to help in the aftermath of the quake, but were struggling with the same problems as ordinary Haitians.

None of the three aid centers run by Doctors Without Borders was operable Wednesday, the group said. The organization was focusing on re-establishing surgical capacity so it could deal with the crushed limbs and head wounds it is seeing.

The earthquake sheared huge slabs of concrete off structures and pancaked scores of buildings, trapping people inside those buildings, and knocking down phone and power lines.

"One woman, I could only see her head and the rest of her body was trapped under a block wall," said Jonathan de la Durantaye, who drove through Port-au-Prince after the quake. "I think she was dead. She had blood coming out of her eyes and nose and ears."

The headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti, a peacekeeping and police force established after the 2004 ouster of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, collapsed during the quake, leaving leaving about 150 members unaccounted for, U.N. officials in New York said Wednesday.

The top two civilian officials at the U.N. mission, Special Representative Hedi Annabi and his deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa, were believed trapped in the rubble of the hotel that housed the world body's headquarters, their fates unknown, said Alain Le Roy, the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations.

The Brazilian-led mission has about 9,000 troops, police and civilian staff in Haiti, about a third of whom were in Port-au-Prince. At least 14 peacekeepers, including 10 Brazilians, three Jordanians and one Haitian, were reported dead Wednesday afternoon, U.N. officials said. Earlier reports from individual countries' defense ministries put the toll at 11 Brazilians, three Jordanians and one Argentine.

Also among the dead was Joseph Serge Miot, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince, according to the official Vatican newspaper. The archbishop was buried beneath rubble along with 100 priests and aspiring priests attending a religious conference, Papal Nuncio Bernardito Auza told the Vatican's Fides news agency.

"There were priests and nuns in the street. ... Everywhere, you heard cries from beneath the rubble," Auza said.

Authorities braced for civil disturbances. Edmond Mulet, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, told CNN that the 95-year-old, badly overcrowded National Penitentiary in the capital, collapsed and the inmates escaped, prompting worries about looting by escapees.

Obama urged Americans trying to locate family members in Haiti to telephone the State Department at 888-407-4747.

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The presidential palace in Port-au-Prince was in ruins. Preval, Haiti's president, said he did not know where he was going to sleep Wednesday night.

"I have plenty of time to look for a bed," he said late in the afternoon. "But now I am working on how to rescue the people. Sleeping is not the problem."