HAITI WAS HIT WITH A 7.0 EARTHQUAKE! BUILDINGS COLLAPSE & HUNDREDS ARE FEARED DEAD!

A devastating quake left Haiti's capital in ruins, knocking down hospitals, high-rises, and churches Tuesday - and leveling the presidential palace.
"There must be thousands of people dead," Catholic Relief Services representative Karel Zelenka told colleagues by phone, just before service went out.

"People were screaming 'Jesus, Jesus' and running in all directions," said Reuters reporter Joseph Guyler Delva from the capital Port-au-Prince. "It's total chaos."

"The whole city is in darkness, you have thousands of people sitting in the streets, with nowhere to go," said Rachmani Domersant of the relief group Food for the Poor.

He and others have reported many downtown buildings collapsed in the city of 2 million, including the parliament, UN headquarters and other other official buildings.

Photographs showed the famed domed presidential palace almost completely destroyed.

President Rene Preval was not hurt, said Raymond Joseph, Haiti's ambassador to the U.S.

"It's going to be a major catastrophe when we start to count the dead," said Joseph.

The extent of the horror was only beginning to emerge. Near-complete power failures left Haiti, an impoverished island nation of 8million, largely cut off from the world.

Efforts to rescue the injured and trapped were described as desperate. People were clawing at the debris with their bare hands, trying to save loved ones, witnesses said.

In the hilly neighborhood of Petionville, where a hospital fell on top of screaming patients, a visiting U.S. federal official said he saw a number of homes collapsed into a ravine.

"The sky is just gray with dust," Henry Bahn said. "I just hear a tremendous amount of noise and shouting and screaming in the distance."

Haitian immigrants in New York City and elsewhere were frantically trying to contact relatives back home - and having no luck getting through.

The magnitude-7.0 quake hitright near Port-au-Prince at 4:53 p.m. and is believed to be the strongest quake in Haiti in more than 200 years. Two powerful aftershocks measuring 5.9 and 5.5 soon followed, further damaging structures weakened by the initial quake.

The quake struck just as Haiti was starting to show the first signs of recovery from the relentless battering of Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike in 2008, which killed hundreds and left 800,000 people homeless.

Famed Haitian musician Wyclef Jean, who has worked to improve conditions in his homeland, said he feared what will follow this "human disaster" - including looting.

"Idle hands will only make this tragedy worse," he warned.

He called on President Obama to quickly send in troops.

"The U.S. military is the only group trained and prepared to offer that assistance immediately," he said. "The international community must also rise to the occasion and help."

The UN peacekeeping force of 7,060 troops and 2,091 police, key to maintaining order in Haiti, is also in crisis. UN officials said their main security headquarters "sustained serious damage ... and a large number of personnel remain unaccounted for."

U.S. committed to help

Obama said the United States stands ready to help.

A State Department spokesman, Gordon Duguid, said search and rescue teams have already been dispatched to the quake-ravaged country.

U.S. Coast Guard officials in Miami have mobilized C-130 aircraft and cutters from ports in Florida, Virginia and New Hampshire.

"We will be providing both civilian and military disaster relief," said Secretary of State Clinton. And her husband, former President Bill Clinton, the UN's special envoy for Haiti, promised his office was "committed to do whatever we can."

Obama received an update from his national security staff on the dire situation in Haiti Tuesday night.

"The President told them that he expects an aggressive, coordinated effort by the U.S. government," said an administration official.

Mobilizing assistance could prove difficult at first as the aid workers in country, many of them Americans, were also affected - and the main airport was damaged.

The Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Conn., reported two of its workers trapped in their Petionville mission house, which partially collapsed.

The two were identified as the mission's acting director, Jillian Thorp, and a consultant, Charles Dietsch. Thorp is the daughter-in-law of retired Rear Adm. Frank Thorp, the Navy's former chief information officer.

Frank Thorp said she called for help using her cell phone and reported her leg injured. The phone died at 8 p.m.

Elsewhere, Red Cross spokeswoman Abi Weaver reported trouble reaching the agency's ground workers.

The local headquarters of Save the Children was also damaged, said Ian Rodgers, its emergency response adviser, who is in Haiti. "Houses all around the headquarters are collapsed," he added.

Mayor Bloomberg said the city would collect cash donations.

He lauded the "special, close relationship" between Haiti and New York, given the 125,000 New Yorkers who hail from that nation.

"New York City stands ready to do all we can to help Haiti, as we have in the past," he said.

"On behalf of 8.4 million New Yorkers, nou ave'w - we are with you," Bloomberg said.

U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Kristin Marano called the quake the strongest since 1770. In 1946, a magnitude-8.1 quake struck the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and also shook Haiti, producing a tsunami that killed 1,790 people.

Haiti was last rocked by a major-magnitude temblor, one measuring 6.7, in 1984.