Port-au-Prince, — Their clothes tattered and caked in dirt, their backs sore from clawing through concrete and debris, residents in earthquake-flattened Port-au-Prince waited Thursday for signs that help is on its way.
They slept out in the open on mattresses and cardboard boxes. Those whose homes hadn’t been reduced to rubble refused to go inside, fearing aftershocks that could send the structures tumbling.

Some sang and clapped to keep their spirits up. Others wailed. The sounds of gunshots sometimes pierced the air.

“Hundreds of people are all hunkered down for the night, passing time and burning tires to light up the night,” said Gwenn Goodale Mangin in Jacmel.

The city — like Port-au-Prince, the capital 25 miles (40 kilometers) away, and other communities in the impoverished island-nation — has been without power and water since Tuesday’s devastating 7.0-magnitude quake.

The quake affected roughly one in three Haitians — about 3 million people, the Red Cross estimated. It was so strong that it was felt in Cuba, more than 200 miles away.

“I watched as house after house just pancaked down, right in front of my eyes,” said Bob Poff of the Salvation Army, who was driving a pickup down a mountain, into Port-au-Prince, at the time.

Felix Augustin, the Haitian consul general to the United Nations, said more than 10,000 were dead, but President Rene Preval said it was too early to put a number to the casualties.
Government officials feared the death toll might eventually run into the six figures.

“I hope the people had time to get out,” said Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. “So many buildings, so many neighborhoods totally destroyed, and some neighborhoods we don’t even see people. So I don’t know where those people are.”

Throughout the nation, the scope of the decimation was apparent.

The bodies and the bleeding covered every inch of a small clinic in Port-au-Prince, the doctors inside overwhelmed with the wounded as they limply lay on floors or leaned on walls in despair.

“We need medicine. We need medical help in general,” Preval said. “Some of the hospitals, they collapsed. The hospitals, they are full and they put people in the outside. … So we need some hospitals, some medicine and some doctors.”

Outside the clinic — and on city sidewalks — people piled up bodies because there was nowhere to take or bury them.
On one street lay the body of a girl, maybe 5 or 6, covered by part of a cardboard box. On another, a man carted an elderly lady in a wheelbarrow toward a hospital.

Though planes carrying aid began arriving Wednesday, humanitarian groups struggled to get supplies to victims, slowed by rubble-strewn roads and downed trees.

In the absence of heavy machinery to clear the debris, residents used their hands and brawn to lift large slabs of concrete. Some trapped victims punched out bricks themselves and tried to squeeze through cracks in the fallen structures.

Rescuers followed the flies. Wherever the insects buzzed meant a survivor or body lay buried underneath.

Near the presidential palace, residents dug for hours to rescue a 13-year-old girl named Bea, who had been trapped in the rubble since Tuesday. A wild cheer went up as she was pulled out alive.

But nearby lay the bodies of four of her family members.

With phone service spotty, residents ran up to reporters and shoved pieces of paper in their hands. They asked reporters to read the notes on air so family members in the United States would know they were alive.

Since the quake, some members of the Haitian parliament have not been accounted for.

Also unaccounted for were 150 members at the collapsed five-story headquarters of the U.N. mission, a peacekeeping and police force established after the 2004 ouster of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Brazilian-led mission has about 9,000 troops. At least 16 of them, including 11 from Brazil, were dead. The top two civilian officials have not been heard from.

Also among the dead was Joseph Serge Miot, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince, the official Vatican newspaper said.

He was buried beneath rubble along with 100 priests and aspiring priests attending a 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.

Doctors Without Borders said it cannot account for many of its 800 staffers in the country. And France expressed concern for about 200 French tourists who were staying at the heavily damaged Hotel Montana.

The overcrowded National Penitentiary in the capital collapsed, and inmates escaped, prompting worries about looting, said Edmond Mulet, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations.

But Bellerive, the prime minister, said the population has remained relatively calm in the face of the disaster.

“With maturity, people are trying to take care of themselves in some quiet places,” the prime minister said. “People are trying to help each other on the streets.”

There was little coordinated response seen from the country’s police or military.

“The government can’t be a victim of the disaster as us,” said radio host Carel Pedre. “The government should take the lead and bring hope to people.”

Nations around the world planned a coordinated approach for the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. The United Nations announced $10 million in aid, and the World Bank $100 million.

Watch as U.N. program vows more food aid

President Obama promised a “swift, coordinated and aggressive” response from the U.S.

“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.

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.

“They’re hurting, but they’re good people and they need our help,” said the former president, who in 1975 honeymooned in Haiti with Hillary Clinton, now the secretary of state.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Preval helped out at a clinic wearing the same clothes he had on when the quake struck.

His majestic presidential palace was in ruins, as was his house. He did not know where he was going to sleep that night, he said.

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

according to CNN