Help children affected
by the earthquake in Haiti
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Please, everyone donate even the smallest of what you can. We are so fortunate. Let us give where truly needed.www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake
Bodies of children lay in piles next to the ruins of their school.
Survivors wandered the streets, their stunned faces covered by white dust and the blood of open wounds.
Frantic doctors wrapped bleeding heads and stitched limbs in a parking lot.
The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere was a picture of heartbreaking devastation Wednesday after a magnitude-7 earthquake that officials said may claim more than 100,000 lives.
Ambulances swerved to miss bodies lying in the street and men lugging stretchers bearing some of the injured.
Survivors with injuries fast growing into infections sat by the roadside, waiting for doctors who were not sure to come.
Everywhere: panic, urgency, pleas for help.
Relief effort begins
President Barack Obama dispatched military troops and an air and sea flotilla to speed earthquake relief to Haiti on Wednesday. Other governments also rushed to help deal with what Obama described as a "cruel and incomprehensible" tragedy.
The massive effort to alleviate the spiraling toll of death and destruction kicked in as the devastation from Tuesday's magnitude-7.0 quake revealed itself.
Dazed survivors wandered past dead bodies in rubble-strewn streets, crying for loved ones, and rescuers searched collapsed buildings as officials feared the death toll would pass 100,000.
The first cargo planes, carrying food, water, medical supplies, shelters and sniffer dogs, headed to the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.
Tuesday's earthquake brought down buildings great and small -- from shacks in shantytowns to President Rene Preval's gleaming white National Palace in the capital of Port-au-Prince, where a dome tilted ominously above the manicured grounds.
Hospitals, schools and the main prison collapsed.
At a triage center improvised in a hotel parking lot, people with cuts, broken bones and crushed ribs moaned under tent-like covers fashioned from bloody sheets.
"I can't take it anymore. My back hurts too much," said Alex Georges, 28, who was still waiting for treatment a day after the school he was in collapsed and killed 11 classmates. A body lay a few feet away.
No word yet on many Americans
U.S. State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley said few of the estimated 45,000 Americans living in the country had been able to communicate with U.S. officials and verify they were safe and sound.
The U.S. set in motion a sweeping military response that included ships, helicopters, transport planes and possibly a 2,000-member Marine unit.
Several thousand soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division based at Ft .Bragg, N.C., were standing by for possible deployment.
In Petionville, next to the Haitian capital, people used sledgehammers and their hands to dig through a collapsed commercial center, tossing aside mattresses and office supplies. More than a dozen cars were entombed, including a United Nations truck.
Nearby, about 200 survivors, including many children, huddled in a theater parking lot using sheets to rig makeshift tents and shield themselves from the sun.
Looting began almost as quickly as the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. and people were seen carrying food from collapsed buildings. Many lugged what they could salvage and stacked it around them as they slept in streets and parks.
People streamed into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed limited signs of damage. Many people balanced suitcases and other belongings on their heads. Ambulances and UN trucks raced in the opposite direction, toward Port-au-Prince.
About 3,000 police and international peacekeepers cleared debris, directed traffic and maintained security in the capital. But law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and was ill-equipped to deal with major unrest.
U.S. officials said it was possible that some American military personnel would aid in security, bolstering Haiti's beleaguered police, but final decisions on their use had not yet been made.
Obama said the initial response would concentrate on search-and-rescue operations but would also look at longer-term humanitarian needs.
U.S. halts deportations
To ease the crushing burden on Haiti's flimsy government and police apparatus, the U.S. announced it had suspended deportation of Haitians who are in the United States illegally.
The United Nations has released $10 million from its emergency funds, even as UN workers and peacekeeping troops in Haiti at the time of the quake struggled with their own losses. The UN headquarters building collapsed, and the reported death toll there was mounting.
The American Red Cross ran out of medical supplies on the ground in Haiti, a spokesman said Wednesday. The small amount of medical equipment and supplies available to Haiti had been distributed, spokesman Eric Porterfield said. More were being sent, but he said he did not know when they would be arriving.
The sheer number of dead bodies was expected to pose a problem. The World Health Organization said it had sent specialists to help clear the city of corpses, and the International Red Cross was to send a plane Thursday loaded mainly with body bags.
What geologists think happened
The actual quake Tuesday appears to have occurred along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault, a virtually immovable rock that runs from Montego Bay in Jamaica to the southern part of the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic.
That vertical fault is pushed by the Caribbean Plate, an unsettled land mass that moves about 20 millimeters east each year.
According to Paul Mann, a research scientist at the University of Texas in Austin, the plates have been pushing against the fault since a major quake in 1760. On Tuesday, the plates got the fault to move.
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