Damaged buildings resulting from the 7.0 magnitude earthquake in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The disaster struck on January 12, 2010. President Rene Preval estimated that thousands had been killed.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
Haiti President Preval Says Thousands May Be Dead
By SIMON ROMERO and MARC LACEY
New York Times
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Dawn brought horrible scenes to light in Haiti’s capital on Wednesday: piles of disintegrated concrete, with limbs sticking out and muffled cries emanating from deep inside; wounded people staggering through the streets; and bodies littering the landscape.
Huge swaths of Port-au-Prince lay in ruins, and thousands of people were feared dead in the rubble of government buildings, foreign aid headquarters and shantytowns that collapsed a day earlier in a powerful earthquake.
The Haitian president, René Préval, told The Miami Herald that the toll was “unimaginable” and estimated that thousands had died. Among those feared dead were the chief of the United Nations mission in Haiti and Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval was quoted as saying. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
“All of the hospitals are packed with people,” he added. “It is a catastrophe.”
Haiti sits on a large fault that has caused catastrophic quakes in the past, but this one was described as among the most powerful to hit the region. The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years and left the country in a shambles, without electricity or phone service, tangling efforts to provide relief to an estimated 3 million people who the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said had been affected by the quake.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said Haiti was now facing a “major humanitarian emergency” that would require a concerted international response.
President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.
Mr. Obama said United States aid agencies were moving swiftly to get help to Haiti and that search-and-rescue teams were already en route. He described the reports of destruction as “truly heart-wrenching,” made more cruel given Haiti’s long-troubled circumstances.
Mr. Obama did not make a specific aid pledge, and administration officials said they were still trying to figure out what the island needed. But he urged Americans to dig into their pockets and to go to the White House’s Web site, www.whitehouse.gov, to find ways to donate money.
“This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all share,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the White House diplomatic reception room with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at his side.
Aid agencies said they would open their storehouses of food and water inside Haiti, and the World Food Program was flying in nearly 100 tons of emergency food from El Salvador. The United Nations said it was freeing up $10 million in emergency relief funds, the European Union pledged $4.4 million, and groups like Doctors Without Borders were setting up clinics in tents and open-air triage centers to treat the injured. But some aid groups with offices in Haiti’s capital were also busy searching for their own dead and missing.
Five workers with the United Nations mission in Haiti were killed and more than 100 more missing after the office’s headquarters collapsed in one of the deadliest single days for United Nations employees. The Tunisian head of the group’s Haitian mission, Hedi Annabi, and his deputy were among the missing, said Alain LeRoy, the United Nations peacekeeping chief.
Earlier Wednesday, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said in radio interviews that Mr. Annabi had been killed in the collapse.
The Brazilian Army, which has one of the largest peacekeeping presences in Haiti, said that four of its soldiers had been killed in the quake and five had been injured. In addition to the human toll, the heavy damage sustained by Haiti’s presidential palace and the United Nations headquarters were a blow to the two major symbols of authority in the country.
“The palace was like something out of a fairy tale in a country that had nothing,” said Johanna Mendelson Forman, a former adviser to the United Nations mission, who now works at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It had red carpets and gold ropes. It was a symbol of one of the few institutions that works there, and that’s the presidency.”
On Wednesday the palace looked like a collapsed wedding cake, with its column-lined facade crumpled and its white domed roof caving in.
Paul McPhun, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders, described scenes of chaos.
When staff members tried to travel by car “they were mobbed by crowds of people,” Mr. McPhun said. “They just want help, and anybody with a car is better off than they are.”
He said that the main hospitals in Port-au-Prince had either collapsed or been abandoned because they were too structurally precarious.
“Our teams are managing what comes to them, but already we’re getting overwhelmed,” he said. “We’re struggling to manage. It’s a very chaotic situation. Information for us is very difficult to gather.”
Aid workers and journalists in the neighboring Dominican Republic swarmed the airport in Santo Domingo, hoping to catch a few emergency flights into Haiti, and a spokesman for the United Nations humanitarian office said aid would be sent into the country on commercial flights.
The Associated Press reported that the Port-au-Prince airport was open, but that the main road connecting it to the capital remained impassable. Other roads had been torn apart in the quake or were blocked by debris, making it more difficult to transport food, fresh water and first aid supplies, and hospitals were overwhelmed by the injured. In a place where there are constant blackouts, the electricity remained out during the early hours Wednesday, and telephones were not working.
More than 30 significant aftershocks of a 4.5 magnitude or higher rattled Haiti through the night and into the early morning, according to Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. “We’ve seen a lot of shaking still happening,” she said.
Bob Poff, a Salvation Army official, said in a written account posted on the Salvation Army’s Web site how he had loaded injured victims — “older, scared, bleeding and terrified” — into the back of his truck and set off in search of help. In two hours, he managed to travel less than a mile, he said.
The account described how Mr. Poff and hundreds of neighbors spent the night outside, in the playground near a children’s home run by the group. Every tremor sent ripples of fear through the survivors, providing “another reminder that we are not yet finished with this calamity,” he wrote.
“And when it comes, all of the people cry out and the children are terrified,” he wrote. Louise Ivers, the clinical director of the aid group Partners in Health, said in an e-mail to her colleagues: “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS . . . Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”
A hospital collapsed in Pétionville, a hillside district in Port-au-Prince that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, a videographer for The Associated Press said. Photos from Haiti on Wednesday showed a hillside scraped nearly bare of its houses, which had tumbled into the ravine below.
Tequila Minsky, a photographer who was in Port-au-Prince, said a wall at the front of the Hotel Oloffson had fallen, killing a passer-by. A number of nearby buildings had crumbled, trapping people, she said, and a Unibank bank building was badly damaged. People were screaming.
“It was general mayhem,” Ms. Minsky said.
The earthquake struck just before 5 p.m. about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the United States Geological Survey said.
Haiti’s many man-made woes — its dire poverty, political infighting and proclivity for insurrection — have been exacerbated repeatedly by natural disasters. At the end of 2008, four hurricanes flooded whole towns, knocked out bridges and left a destitute population in even more desperate conditions.
Simon Romero reported from Santo Domingo and Marc Lacey from Mexico City. Reporting was contributed by Ginger Thompson and Brian Knowlton from Washington, Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City, Neil MacFarquhar from New York and Mery Galanternick from Rio de Janeiro.
Haiti's quake devastation emerges
Haitian President Rene Preval has said thousands of people are feared dead following a huge quake which has devastated the country's capital.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the head of the UN mission in Haiti and his deputy were among more than 100 staff missing.
The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti's worst in two centuries, struck south of Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday.
The Red Cross says up to three million people are affected. The capital's Catholic archbishop is reported killed.
A priest at the Saint Jacques Missionary Centre in western France told Associated Press news agency Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot had been found dead in his office by fellow missionaries.
In his first interview since the earthquake, President Preval told the Miami Herald newspaper in the US he feared thousands of his people had died.
Describing the scene in the capital as "unimaginable", he said: "Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed.
"There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them."
A number of nations, including the US, UK and Venezuela, are gearing up to send aid.
Speaking in Washington, US President Barack Obama vowed "unwavering support" for Haiti after what he called a "particularly cruel" disaster.
He said the first US rescue teams would arrive later on Wednesday.
The quake, which struck about 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, was quickly followed by two aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude.
The first tremor had hit at 1653 local time (2153 GMT) on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said. Phone lines to the country failed shortly afterwards.
UN officials said at least five people had died when the UN's headquarters in Port-au-Prince collapsed and that more than 100 staff were unaccounted for and feared to be under the rubble.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed the Tunisian head of the UN mission in Haiti, Hedi Annabi, and his deputy were missing, along with many others.
He said hundreds of people were feared dead and aerial reconnaissance showed Port-au-Prince had been "devastated" by the quake, although other areas were largely unaffected.
Stressing a major international relief effort would be needed, Mr Ban said the UN would immediately release $10m (£6.15m) from its emergency response fund.
The airport in Port-au-Prince and a UN logistical base are operational, the UN said, allowing aid to start arriving soon.
Gary Duffy, BBC News, Sao Paulo Given Brazil's central role in leading the military side of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti the earthquake has caused a lot of concern and shock here.
The authorities here say 11 soldiers have died and there have been several injuries, and there are fears this number could rise.
It has also been confirmed that Zilda Arns, a prominent Brazilian aid worker and paediatrician, has been killed. She was a sister of the retired Cardinal Paulo Arns, a major figure in the Catholic Church here.
Some soldiers have managed to make contact to reassure relatives, but given the damage to infrastructure at Brazilian bases, communication is proving difficult, even for the government.
China has already indicated in reports in state media that eight of its peacekeepers are dead, with another 10 unaccounted for.
The AFP news agency quoted the Jordanian army as saying three of its peacekeepers had been killed and 21 wounded.
The Brazilian army said 11 of its peacekeepers had been killed and a large number were missing.
A French official also told AFP that about 200 people were missing in the collapsed Hotel Montana, which is popular with tourists.
There were also some reports of looting overnight.
Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity, told Reuters the capital had been in total darkness overnight.
"You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go."
People were "trying to dig victims out with flashlights", he said. "Hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement."
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and has suffered a number of recent disasters, including four hurricanes and storms in 2008 that killed hundreds.
'Thoughts and prayers'
With communications destroyed by the earthquake, it is not yet possible to confirm the extent of the destruction, although there were reports on Wednesday of many bodies piled in the streets.
People in the capital were lifting sheets on bodies to try to identify loved ones.
----------------------------------------------------
HAITI COUNTRY PROFILE
Half of Caribbean island of Hispaniola
History of violence, instability and dictatorship
Population of 10 million people
Most live on less than $2 a day
Democratic rule restored in 2006
Economy in ruins and unemployment is chronic
UN peacekeepers deployed - foreign aid seen as vital
Massive deforestation has left just 2% forest
Storms and hurricanes in 2008 left almost 800 dead
----------------------------------------------------
Damage has also been reported in the towns of Jacmel and Carrefour, near Port-au-Prince.
Guido Cornale, a representative of the UN children's agency, Unicef, in Jacmel said it estimated more than one-in-five buildings had been destroyed.
Venezuela says it will send a 50-strong "humanitarian assistance team" to Haiti.
The Red Cross is dispatching a relief team from Geneva and the UN's World Food Programme is flying in two planes with emergency food aid.
The Inter-American Development Bank said it was immediately approving a $200,000 grant for emergency aid.
The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it would co-ordinate with other international agencies to offer help as swiftly as possible.
The World Bank also said it was mobilising a team to assess the damage and plan recovery. It said its offices in Port-au-Prince had been destroyed but that most staff were accounted for.
The UK said it was mobilising help and was "ready to provide whatever humanitarian assistance may be required".
Canada, Australia, France and a number of Latin American nations have also said they are mobilising their aid response.
Pope Benedict XVI has called for a generous response to the "tragic situation" in Haiti.
'Shouting and screaming'
In the minutes after the quake, Henry Bahn, a visiting official from the US Department of Agriculture, said he had seen houses which had tumbled into a ravine.
"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Mr Bahn, who described the sky as "just grey with dust".
He said he had been walking to his hotel room when the ground began to shake.
"I just held on and bounced across the wall," he said. "I just heard a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."
Reports on the Twitter message site, which cannot yet be verified by the BBC, expressed the chaos in the wake of the quake.
One writer said: "4 new aftershock in Haiti at 07:27, 07:41, 09:43 and 09:43: magnitude ranging from 4.5 to 5.4."
Tweets from troylivesay spoke of the worst damage being in the Carrefour district, where "many two and three storey buildings did not make it".
In the immediate aftermath of the quake, a tsunami watch was put out for Haiti, Cuba and the Bahamas, but this was later lifted.
Have you been affected by the earthquake? If you have any information you wish to share with the BBC you can do so using the form below:
You can send pictures and video to yourpics@bbc.co.uk , text them to +44 7725 100 100 or if you have a large file you can click here to upload .
At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8456819.stm
Published: 2010/01/13 16:50:04 GMT
Agencies help quake rescue effort
Emergency crews, charities and the UK government are co-ordinating efforts to help with the rescue operation in Haiti after it was hit by an earthquake.
The 7.0-magnitude quake that hit south of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince is feared to have killed thousands of people across the Caribbean country.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "deeply saddened" by the disaster and pledged whatever support was needed.
A government spokesman said no British casualties had been reported so far.
A 61-strong team of firefighters from across the UK has volunteered to fly out to the quake zone.
'Know the devastation'
The team will be taking specialist equipment and two search dogs.
But aid from the UK has been delayed after the closure of Gatwick Airport because of the heavy snow and treacherous weather.
Lincolnshire's Chief Fire Officer, Mike Thomas, will act as team leader for the whole of the UK response.
He said many of the team members had helped out in similar situations before and knew what to expect in the rescue operation.
"We know the devastation, risks and shock this can have on a community and we'll be there to help as best we can," he said.
Greater Manchester firefighter Peter Stevenson, who will work as operation commander when the volunteers arrive in Haiti, said they would work in two teams to search for survivors.
"One rescue can take between six and 10 hours, depending on the situation and what the building is made from," Mr Stevenson said.
"We go totally self-reliant, with several tonnes of equipment so we can work 24 hours a day on at least two separate sites."
The teams will be using heavy breaking equipment, specialist cameras and acoustic listening devices.
'Window of opportunity'
The group includes volunteers from fire and rescue services in Greater Manchester, Lancashire, West Sussex, Kent, the West Midlands, Lincolnshire, Hampshire, and mid and west Wales.
Cornwall-based international relief charity Shelterbox, which provides survival and shelter equipment in disaster zones, has also mobilised a response team from the UK and the USA to assess the aid requirements of victims left homeless by the earthquake.
The firefighters do not know how long they will have to stay in Haiti but a spokesman for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service said they would only have a "small window of opportunity" to try to reach people buried beneath the rubble.
Mr Brown expressed his sympathy for the victims of the earthquake.
He said: "I am deeply saddened and worried about the reported scale of the earthquake in Haiti.
"I am sending a message of sympathy and support to President Preval and we are sending a team from the Department for International Development to assess the humanitarian needs.
"We stand ready to provide whatever humanitarian assistance is required."
Much of Haiti's nine million population is impoverished and the disaster comes after years of political instability.
The country has suffered a number of recent disasters, including hurricanes and storms in 2008.
The Department for International Development (DFID) is helping to co-ordinate UK aid being sent to Haiti.
Restoring services
International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander warned Haiti would not only need help in rescuing individuals, but also in rebuilding damaged infrastructure and restoring vital public services.
He told the BBC News Channel: "While it is vital and urgent that we get people on to the ground in terms of rescuing people from the rubble, this is going to be a longer-term endeavour.
"That is why the whole international community needs to work together to address the needs that are uncovered as a result of this terrible tragedy."
Mobilising support
Save the Children, which has 60 staff working in Haiti, has released £50,000, launching an appeal for £3m.
Oxfam said it had a 100-strong team focusing on public health, water and sanitation services to prevent the spread of waterborne disease in Haiti. It has launched an appeal for millions of pounds.
The British Red Cross said the most urgent needs were search and rescue, hospital care, emergency health support, clean water and shelter. It has released £200,000 from its funds.
Christian Aid also launched a £1m emergency appeal for victims, while the medical services charity Merlin said it had launched a £250,000 emergency appeal and was mobilising a response team to fly to Haiti.
A Scottish-based rescue organisation said it was desperate for more funds so it could go to the disaster-struck nation.
Derek Jolly, from the International Rescue Corps (IRC), based in Grangemouth, said the charity had just £30,000 left in the bank. A rescue mission would cost at least £35,000.
About 40 of the charity's 150 members are on standby to go to disasters.
ActionAid, an international charity, said it was also sending an emergency response team to Haiti.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/8457660.stm
Published: 2010/01/13 17:21:53 GMT
LiveScience
January 13, 2010
Earthquake Science: The Haitian Quake Explained
What caused the Haiti earthquake, and why was it so devastating? Answers to these and other questions.
The earthquake that devastated Haiti Tuesday was the strongest temblor to hit the island nation in more than 200 years. The magnitude 7.0 quake caused tremendous damage that officials have yet to fully characterize, and the death toll may run into the thousands.
What caused the Haiti earthquake, and why was it so devastating? Here are answers to these and other questions:
What caused the earthquake?
The shaking started on Tuesday, Jan. 12, at 4:53 p.m. EST in the Haiti region, just 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince.
The Haiti earthquake occurred at a fault that runs right through Haiti and is situated along the boundary between the Caribbean and North American plates, rocky slabs that cover the planet and fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. These two plates constantly creep past one another, about 0.8 inches a year, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward with respect to the North American slab.
"Twenty millimeters a year of slippage is very small, and that's not what people felt," said Carrieann Bedwell, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC).
Rather, they felt the release of energy from the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system. "The two sides of the fault line moved past each other in an east-west direction and that's what caused the energy release and the Haiti earthquakes," Bedwell said.
The high magnitude of this quake took scientists by surprise, as this system of faults hasn't triggered a major temblor in recent decades. The fault has, however, been linked to some historical big ones in 1860, 1770, 1761, 1751, 1684, 1673 and 1618, though none of these has been confirmed in the field as associated with this fault, according to the USGS.
What does magnitude 7.0 mean?
Magnitude measures the energy released at the source of the earthquake. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake would release 10 times as much energy as a 6.0-magnitude temblor. Geoscientists also look at an earthquake's intensity, which measures the strength of shaking produced by the earthquake at a certain location and is determined from the effects that shaking has on people, structures and the environment.
How rare was the Haiti earthquake?
The Caribbean isn't exactly a hot zone for earthquakes, but they're not unheard of in the region.
Yesterday's earthquake was one of the largest ever to hit the area — the last time an earthquake this strong struck Haiti was in the 18th century.
Haiti takes up about half of the island of Hispaniola, while the Dominican Republic lies on the other side. In 1946, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake shook Samana, in the Dominican Republic, causing about 100 fatalities. The recent quake will likely have a much greater casualty toll because it hit a more densely populated region.
Why was the Haiti earthquake so devastating?
While magnitude is important, it's the intensity that matters to those affected by a natural disaster.
"In general, earthquakes have different characteristics whether they are in the ocean or on land and depending on the geologic setting they are in," Bedwell told LiveScience. "A mountainous and rocky setting is more characteristic of not as much ground shaking, opposed to abundant sediments and not as rocky where there's a potential for higher ground shaking. Haiti would be a more sediment type, more severe ground shaking geologic setting."
Depth is also important, as the source of the Haiti quake was 6.2 miles below the Earth's surface.
"The depth of this earthquake in Haiti was very shallow, meaning that the energy that was released is very close to the surface, which can also be another characteristic that causes some violent ground shaking," Bedwell said. "An earthquake that's very deep – that energy has a chance to go through the Earth's crust before reaching the Earth's surface and possibly not causing as much shaking of the ground."
Unofficial USGS reports suggest the shaking lasted anywhere from 35 seconds to up to a minute, Bedwell said. "That's a pretty long amount of time for the ground to be shaking."
All of these effects get magnified when the infrastructure is shoddy and not built to withstand shaking. "Unfortunately, Haiti has a rather poor economy and not a wonderful building style for earthquake resistance, so we would expect that we would see quite severe and widespread damage from this earthquake," Michael Blanpeid, associate coordinator for the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, said in a podcast released today.
A potentially similar effect was seen when a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck China's Sichuan province, taking tens of thousands of lives. Earthquake engineers speculated the adobe and masonry buildings and homes, many of which were probably not reinforced with steel as building codes dictate, added to the earthquake damage, especially in more rural areas.
What is the potential for future aftershocks in Haiti?
The threat is not over. "So far we have monitored over 40 aftershocks ranging from 4.5 all the way up to 5.9," Bedwell said. About 14 of those aftershocks were magnitude 5.0 or larger.
And they expect more in the coming weeks, she said. There is no way to predict whether one aftershock will be stronger than the next, as they will come in no particular order, according to Bedwell, but typically range between 4.0 and 5.5 magnitude.
The Port-au-Prince earthquake is not believed to pose a tsunami threat because it happened on land as opposed to out in the deep ocean.
"The only positive thing about this earthquake is that because it did occur on land, it did not generate a tsunami, and so that is one hazard that is quite a severe one in the area that was not faced by the people due to this earthquake," Blanpeid said.
The USGS initially sent out a tsunami alert but as more information about the quake came in, the alert was cancelled.
"A destructive widespread tsunami threat does not exist based on historical earthquake and tsunami data," according to a message posted on the USGS Web site.
The threat of mudslides is also on scientists' radars. "Wherever there are steep slopes or coastal areas there's likely to be landsliding, and that can bury homes, or block streams, rivers, block roads," Blanpeid said.
What was the world's deadliest earthquake?
While the death toll in Haiti is still unknown, the deadliest earthquake in history struck that struck Shaanxi, China, in 1556, killing an estimated 830,000 people.
January 13, 2010
Archbishop of Port-Au-Prince Dies in Haiti Quake
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:36 a.m. ET
PARIS (AP) -- A Roman Catholic priest in France says Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, has died in the Haiti earthquake.
Father Pierre Le Beller of the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in western France says fellow missionaries in Haiti told him they found Miot's body in the ruins of the archdiocese office.
Miot was 63. Le Beller spoke to The Associated Press by phone from the Brittany town of Landivisiau.
The order of missionary priests was officially founded in 1951 by the bishop of Gonaives, Haiti. While headquartered in France, it retains a strong presence in Haiti and traces its unofficial missionary activity to 1860.
Haiti earthquake: Journalist in six-hour dash across island to rescue wife trapped under rubble
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:53 PM on 13th January 2010
A reporter has told of his desperate dash across earthquake-struck Haiti to rescue his wife from under a collapsed building.
American journalist Frank Thorp was six hours away from the capital of Port-au-Prince when he got a 'terrifying' ten-second phone call from his wife Jillian to say she was trapped under their concrete home in the city.
It came minutes after a 7.0 quake ripped through the poor Caribbean nation, with thousands feared to have died after buildings collapsed all over the crowded capital.
The earthquake, followed by at least 30 aftershocks, was the biggest to hit the nation in 200 years and has left it in desperate need of help as the population was still struggling to recover from three hurricane strikes in 2008.
Mr Thorp said the short phone call, made through Skype, meant he did not even know how his wife was as he drove to their Port-au-Prince home.
He told US television's The Early Show: 'I don't often get emotional, and this is one of those moments where it's hard to describe how I was feeling.
'I mean, you know, I wasn't really sure whether she was OK. I had spoken to her on Skype for about ten seconds. She said she was trapped and that's all that I knew. It was terrifying, it was absolutely terrifying.'
He said: 'We were 100miles north of Port-au-Prince at the time and we felt the ground shake so we just thought it was a small quake.
'But then we started to hear the news reports that it had hit Port-au-Prince so hard that we jumped straight into the car.'
After a six-hour drive Mr Thorp got there to find the three-storey concrete house completely collapsed to ground level, with his wife still trapped underneath along with a colleague who works with her at a charity and members of her house staff.
He said: 'Some of the Haitian workers here had broken through the ceiling... I jumped into the hole and I was able to see her wave her hand.
'I couldn't see her whole body, she as just waving. I could hear her voice.'
He added: 'We had to pull brick after brick after brick and doors and metal away for at least an hour after to get her out.'
Although his wife was in good condition, her housekeeper had to have both her legs amputated.
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