Prayers indeed.
Our local state news reported at least one Church out of Beaverton Oregon has missionaries over there.
I dont have the sound up loud enough to know if they are ok or not.
The spokesmen for the church looked upbeat and cheery so perhaps they are all well.
So if our a Church here in Oregon has missionaries I am going to assume many more from America and other countries are there too.
It’s possible the fat cats in more substantial dwellings were wiped out, while those living in flimsier quarters may have fared better
It is very easy to get lulled into accepting the common habit and accept housing that is dangerous in a fire or earthquake, in all bot the most modern of towns and cities. I know I worked in Mexico City for a year, and I was always careful to stay in places where the building can hold up to earthquake and have safe evacuation in fire. It takes some personal education and a bold stance at times.
The most unsafe buildings in an earthquake are those sitting on a “sand bowl” and those which are two-stories, or those from three to six stories. Why? Because the bowl amplifies shock waves, just like a speaker cone. And buildings of six stories and less do NOT have the beam, frame and foundation reinforcement that high rises do, and of those two story buildings are typically the most fragile.
From the photos I have seen of Haiti and Port-au-Prince the majority of construction is exactly that — two story construction built on bowl-type geology.
I’d suspect the death toll is like that of Bam, Iraq — hundreds of thousands.
Correction, I misremembered the Bam Iraq death toll, conflating it with the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami where the death toll was at least 300,000.
The 26 December 2003 Bam earthquake caused the deaths of 26,271 people and injured about 30,000.