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MASSIVE TRAGEDY IN HAITI

As many as 200,000 people have died in the earthquake that devastated Haiti and three-quarters of the capital, Port-au-Prince, will need to be rebuilt.

Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime told media that “We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies. We anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number.”  Some 40,000 bodies had been buried in mass graves, said Secretary of State for Public Safety Aramick Louis.

Haiti Presidential Palace

Haiti Presidential Palace

If the casualty figures turn out to be accurate, the 7.0 magnitude quake that hit impoverished Haiti on Tuesday would be one of the 10 deadliest earthquakes ever recorded.

Three days after it struck, gangs of robbers had begun preying on survivors living in makeshift camps on sidewalks and streets strewn with rubble and decomposing bodies, as quake aftershocks rippled through the hilly neighborhoods.

Looters have broken into UN food ware-houses in Haiti’s capital.

The five-storey building housing the headquarters of the U.N. mission in Haiti along with hundreds of homes, offices and  the presidential palace have collapsed and thousands are feared dead following a magnitude 7 earthquake. Three top UN officials have been confirmed dead in the earthquake.

President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive were living in and coordinating the government from judicial police headquarters near the airport and their main concern was that desperation was turning to violence in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

The shell-shocked president, whose government house collapsed in the quake, told the media in an interview, “I do not have a home, I do not have a telephone, this is my palace now.”

People are living in make-shift tents and don’t even know where the help will come from or who is in charge of the country torn apart by the quake.

United States and other nations rushed to deliver food, water and medical supplies through a jammed airport, a smashed seaport and roads littered with rubble.

President Barack Obama, who pledged an initial $100 million in quake relief, promised the United States would do what it takes to save lives and get Haiti back on its feet. “The scale of the devastation is extraordinary … and the losses are heartbreaking,” Obama said at the White House.

Government of India is deeply saddened at the death and destruction caused by the earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010. Government has also decided to give US$ 1 million in cash to Haiti for immediate and emergency relief purposes.

“All together, we are more than 9,000 uniformed personnel, and other personnel are helping in the relief and rescue operations”, said an official from the relief operations.

 It is the first time in the history of earthquakes that bodies are being carried in dumpers and off-loaded in a dug-up-pit and covered with rubble and debris collected from the collapsed buildings.

Earthquakes are caused by shifting masses of rock miles below the surface of the earth and energy created due to the heat and molten lava keeps accumulating over centuries. The release of this energy causes the tremors. If the focal depth of the quake is shallow, it causes widespread damages.

The major fault zones lie in the Western Coasts of North and South America, the Aleutian Islands and the island groups along the eastern Coast of Asia such as Japan and the Philippines and thus borders the Pacific Ocean on the east, north and the west.

It includes the Mediterranean, the Alps, the Caucasus and the Himalayas and continues into the East Indies, where it intersects the first belt. Uttaranchal- Assam and Andaman- Nicobar island chains fall within the second belt and thus face frequent earthquakes of devastating nature.