Mighty 7.0 earthquake rocks impoverished Haiti

COMBINED NEWS SERVICES

PORT-AU-PRINCE - A mighty earthquake rocked the tiny, impoverished island nation of Haiti Tuesday, largely destroying the capital.

The quake collapsed a hospital, the presidential palace and other buildings in Port-au-Prince, and triggered what one diplomat called a "catastrophe."

The quake, one of the most powerful ever in the region - measuring a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and centered about 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million - had a shallow depth of just 5 miles. It struck at 4:53 p.m., followed by several strong aftershocks.

Many gravely injured people sat in the street last night, pleading for doctors hours after the quake. In public squares, thousands of people held hands and sang hymns.

At least two Americans, one of them a young aid worker related to a retired senior U.S. naval officer, are believed to be among those trapped in wreckage.

The executive director of Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Conn., Emily Smack, said she believed two of the organization's staff are trapped in their mission house, which partially collapsed.

Smack identified the staffers as the mission's acting director, Jillian Thorp, and a management consultant, Charles Dietsch. Thorp is the daughter-in-law of retired Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, who had been the Navy's chief information officer.

Electricity was out last night throughout the darkened capital, phone lines were down and the airport was shut. Screams for help came from felled buildings, and chaos reigned.

"I can hear very distressed people . . . a lot of distress, people wailing, trying to find loved ones trapped under the rubble," Ian Rodgers, with Save the Children in Port-au-Prince, told CNN by telephone.

In Washington, President Barack Obama pledged to help the crippled country.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in remarks before a speech in Hawaii, said the United States was assessing the situation and "is offering our full assistance to Haiti and to others in the region."

"We will be providing both civilian and military disaster relief and humanitarian assistance," Clinton said. "And our prayers are with the people who have suffered, their families and their loved ones."

A spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees American military operations in the Caribbean and South America, said officials are assessing what assistance or aid might be needed.

The Associated Press said its reporters saw a hospital collapse in the wealthy suburb of Petionville that overlooks the capital.

A spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services said the group's representative in Haiti, Karel Zelenka, described "total disaster and chaos" before the telephone line went dead. Zelenka told colleagues that the Haitian capital was covered in dust.

"He estimates there must be thousands of people dead," the spokeswoman, Sara Fajardo, said in an interview from the group's office in Maryland.

"Within a minute of the quake . . . soil, dust and smoke rose up over the city, a blanket that completely covered the city and obscured it for about 12 minutes until the atmospheric conditions dissipated the dust," Mike Godfrey, who works with USAID, told CNN from Port-au-Prince.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. Haiti has been battered in recent years by storms, military coups and gang violence.