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Haitian President Rene Preval said: "The damage I have seen here can be compared to the damage you would see if the country was bombed for 15 days. It is like in a war." The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated much of the hilly coastal city on Tuesday also collapsed the elegant presidential palace and his own home. Authorities in Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, are saying they believe the death toll will be between 100,000 and 200,000 and that three-quarters of the city will need to be rebuilt.

An earthquake that devastated Haiti has left thousands in dire need of medical attention - but hospitals are being stretched to near breaking point. An earthquake that devastated Haiti has left thousands in dire need of medical attention - but hospitals are being stretched to near breaking point. The disaster, estimated to have killed up to 200,000 people, has left many more injured. But the quake has damaged the nation's infrastructure so severely that many survivors are succumbing to their wounds due to lack of treatment. The injured keep coming into hospitals that cannot cope. Corridors and waiting areas at...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Top defense officials have ruled out airdropping food, water and medical supplies over Haiti, fearing that chaos would be the unintended result. “It seems to me that without having any structure on the ground, in terms of distribution, that an airdrop is simply going to lead to riots as people try and go after that stuff,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday. On Thursday, an Air Force official said that a lack of fuel and equipment was slowing air operations at the Port-au-Prince airport. The first of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson’s 19 helicopters have...

CORALVILLE – Congestion at the Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti is hampering the ability for one University of Iowa emergency medical doctor to travel to the country and provide assistance to those who survived the quake. It has been an agonizing few days for Dr. Christopher Buresh, assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, to hear about what is happening in a country he has frequented and to know he cannot get there as quickly as he would like. “The emails say ‘Help, we’re out of Band-Aids, we’re out of gloves, we’re out of...

Earlier, I posted a thread from Al Mohler's blog titled "Does God Hate Haiti?" I made the mistake of posting the whole blog rather than the excerpt highlighting Mohler's main points. Many freepers made assumptions about Mohler's Biblical insight based on the title and first few paragraphs without reading the ENTIRE article. Mohler is simply reminding believers GOD is in control of all things, whether we fully understand His reasons or not. "We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening." Mohler...

When an earthquake ravages a country as poor and urbanized as Haiti, it produces the cruelest kind of synergy, as poverty breeds cramped living quarters that are left even more vulnerable by substandard construction work.

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The images streaming in from Haiti look like scenes from Dante's Inferno. The scale of the calamity is unprecedented. In many ways, Haiti has almost ceased to exist. The earthquake that will forever change that nation came as subterranean plates shifted about six miles under the surface of the earth, along a fault line that had threatened trouble for centuries. But no one saw a quake of this magnitude coming. The 7.0 quake came like a nightmare, with the city of Port-au-Prince crumbling, entire villages collapsing, bodies flying in the air and crushed under mountains of debris. Orphanages, churches, markets,...

Here is a video report on the plan for close to 10,000 U.S. Military Personnel to be on the ground in Haiti, or on ships just offshore by Monday. The speed with which everything can be put in place is being hampered there by the fact that the Port-Au-Prince Airport has only one usable runway, and there are so many planes needing to use it. An entire brigade of 3,500 from the 82nd Airborne is expected to be on the ground by this weekend to provide security in the devastated area. The Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Carl Vinson should arrive on...

Roman Catholicism may be the nominal faith in Haiti but voodoo is the true national religion. Closely related to this is the common practice of santeria, animal sacrifice. The most egregious African superstitions have merged with a superficial and distorted version of Christianity to produce a primordial blend of arrant nonsense that has created a cult of barbarism. Haiti is not the most impoverished and backward nation in the Western hemisphere simply by happenstance. It remains, as it always has, beyond the pale of civilization. And all the romanticizing of the Haitian people by the MSM won't change that reality.

Here is a video report on the desperate situation in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, where the city is described as being "on edge" as lack of food, water, and shelter are taking their toll on the people. The streets are described as being the "roads of the dead" as bodies are everywhere, with not enough room in the cemeteries to bury them all. . . . (VIDEO)

Some of the dead in this shattered city line the roads, carefully placed garments shrouding their faces. Others are carried into the hills for quick burials. Hundreds are arrayed in a macabre tangle of limbs outside a morgue, just feet from the grievously wounded. The living and the dead here share the same space -- the sidewalks, the public plazas, the hospitals. The living are frightened of being inside in case another earthquake hits; the dead are everywhere. On the doorstep of a pharmacy, six bodies were lined up shoulder to shoulder. On the body of one woman, covered in...

Via Breitbart, the Robertson story’s almost out of gas but a rejoinder this clever deserves wider airing. Most were content to hammer Reverend Pat yesterday for blaming the victims, but this guy’s after bigger game. If you’re trying to divine divine will by tracing a cause-and-effect line between certain historical data points, how do you know which data points to select? Does Haiti get no credit in the heavenly ledger for overthrowing a slaveholder regime and thereby bringing about the conditions for the U.S. to purchase the Louisiana territory? If not, if that’s spoiled by their, ahem, “pact with the...

Central Business District Resembles Hell On Earth As Bodies Pile Up And Armed Men Battle Over Food, Supplies PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CBS) The earthquake aftermath has brought out the best and worst of the people of Haiti. Much like the days after Hurricane Katrina, looting has become a problem very quickly. The looting appears to be isolated to Port-au-Prince's old commercial center. It's an area that under normal circumstances would be filled with many shops, markets and a few homes. But on Wednesday it was a completely different scene. It looked like a war zone. Some of the buildings were on...

Desperate Haitians have set up roadblocks with corpses in Port-au-Prince to demand quicker relief efforts after a massive earthquake killed tens of thousands and left countless others homeless. Angry survivors staged the protest as international aid began arriving in the Haitian capital to help a nation traumatized by a magnitude 7.0 quake that flattened homes and government buildings. More than 48 hours after the disaster, tens of thousands of people have clamoured for food and water and help digging out relatives still missing under the rubble. Shaul Schwarz, a photographer for TIME magazine, says he saw at least two downtown...

Less than an hour after a massive earthquake turned Haiti into an unimaginable hell of death and devastation, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an extraordinary call to action, remarkably putting the first Canadian rescue team on the stricken island by the next afternoon. By all accounts, the launch of Operation Hestia (goddess of the hearth) was vintage Harper: No nonsense; no excuses. It all started Tuesday evening, minutes after word of the Haitian catastrophe reached Harper’s office. The PM was briefed aboard his jet as he arrived in Ottawa from a day-trip to Quebec, and immediately issued two clear orders...

HH: I begin this Thursday with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn, www.steynonline.com. Very few people have traveled as far around the globe as Mark. Mark, have you ever seen anything remotely approaching this Haiti thing? MS: No, because I think Haiti is, certainly in the Western Hemisphere, as near as you can get to an entirely non-functioning state. By the standards of the Caribbean, it’s a failure and a disaster before the earthquake strikes. If an earthquake had happened to strike the Bahamas, or even the Turks And Caicos, it would not have looked like this. And that’s why...

Haitians have begun blocking their roads with corpses in a dramatic protest against the delay in aid at the capital of Port-au-Prince. PHOTOS: Earthquake devastation rocks HaitiThe sight was witnessed by TIME magazine photographer Shaul Schwarz, who told Reuters news agency that he saw two roadblocks in the city formed entirely of dead bodies jammed together. "They are starting to block the roads with bodies; it's getting ugly out there. People are fed up with getting no help," he was reported as saying. (READ MORE: Despair as Haiti sees little sign of aid) In the third night since the quake,...

Two days after the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck beneath Port-au-Prince, Haiti, some of the massive damage is becoming more apparent. Rescue teams are arriving, aid groups are trying their best to battle huge logistical challenges, bodies are being identified, and some medical care is being given. Rescue teams from all over the world have joined the recovery effort, as the United States pledged $100 million in relief efforts. The Red Cross ventured an estimate of up to 50,000 deaths, as bodies at the local morgues overflowed into the streets. Collected here are some more scenes from this devastated region -...

Shaul Schwarz, a photographer for TIME magazine, said he saw at least two downtown roadblocks formed with bodies of earthquake victims and rocks. "They are starting to block the roads with bodies, it's getting ugly out there, people are fed up with getting no help," he said. President Barack Obama has promised Haitians they would not be forgotten, offering $100 million in immediate earthquake aid and the backing of every element of US power. A large-scale US military and civilian aid operation has gained momentum with Washington sending rescue teams, ships, helicopters, planes, a floating hospital, emergency supplies and more...