HAITI'S DEATH TOLL COULD BE MORE THAN 100,000!

A city lay shattered and its people struggled without the most basic medical help Wednesday as officials predicted the death toll from Haiti's cataclysmic earthquake would top 100,000.
The televised scenes of horror - fathers carrying dead babies, mothers lying bleeding in enormous piles of rubble - galvanized the world to help the desperate Haitians.

As dusk approached, the first of a global fleet of air transports began to land, bearing medical supplies, food and water in hopes of heading off an even worse humanitarian catastrophe.

The capital Port-au-Prince was largely destroyed. Shrouded bodies lined the streets as dazed survivors scrabbled in the debris for loved ones.

"Please take me out, I am dying," came a woman's voice from under the remains of a kindergarten. "I have two children with me."

Haiti's Senate president was among those believed to be trapped alive in the rubble of the parliament building.

The scale of the calamity - which smashed one of the world's poorest nations when it was already at the breaking point after four devastating hurricanes - was hard to fathom.

"It's biblical, the tragedy that continues to daunt Haiti," said Secretary of State Clinton, who delayed a trip to Asia to deal with quake aid.

President Obama called the earthquake "especially cruel and incomprehensible" and ordered a rapid mobilization of military aid.

He canceled most of his schedule to stay on top of rescue efforts and turned the White House Web site into a fund-raising appeal.

'These are good people'

Former President Bill Clinton, who is the UN special envoy to Haiti, met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about coordinating global support to provide Haiti with water, basic medical supplies, food and shelter. He also went on TV to plead for compassion - and donations, no matter how small - for the Haitians.

"These are good people. They've gotten a raw deal time and time again, and they keep coming back," he said on CNN.

"They need your help now," he said. "These people deserve a chance to bury their dead, to heal their wounded, to eat, to sleep, to begin to recover."

Not one of the capital's hospitals survived the catastrophe, and little help was available for the wounded. The Red Cross and the U.S. Embassy quickly ran out of supplies, and the few doctors on the ground couldn't help.

"We're seeing severe traumas - head wounds, crushed limbs - that cannot be dealt with," said Paul McPhun, operations manager for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.

"Everywhere we go [there is] a massive demand from people to help them with trapped family members, with people who are suffering from major, major injuries."

The organization was preparing to fly in an inflatable hospital - a remarkable recent invention that can be erected in three hours, complete with generators, ventilation, heating and 110 beds.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive estimated the death toll would top 100,000.

A Haitian senator said the vast scale of the destruction suggested more than 500,000 may be dead - which would make it one of the worst natural disasters in history.

Bill Clinton said he hoped the dire predictions were premature.

"We're going to have, I think, another three or four hard days of just clearing the living and those that have died," he said. "What I'm hoping is that more people have survived these collapsing buildings than they think."

Miracles do happen. Haitian President Rene Preval and his wife were unhurt when the top two stories of the Presidential Palace pancaked into the ground floor, destroying most of the building.

Nations rushed to send relief.

A Coast Guard cutter with the ability to replace the toppled air-traffic control tower at the Port-au-Prince airport arrived so planeloads of aid could begin to land.

A fleet of other Coast Guard and Navy vessels were also heading to Haiti to help.

In New York, 311 received thousands of calls from concerned New Yorkers, Mayor Bloomberg said.

The mayor and other city leaders gathered in Brooklyn, which has one of the highest concentrations of Haitians in the U.S., to ask people to send cash - not supplies - to the Red Cross or other charities.

He said the city's architects, engineers, health workers, firefighters and cops are on standby waiting to help.

The Red Cross estimated 3 million people were affected - either killed, wounded or homeless.

Among the dead was Haiti's revered archbishop, Msgr. Serge Miot, whose body was pulled from the rubble of his offices by missionaries.

UN mission hit hard

The five-story UN headquarters in the Christopher Hotel was destroyed, killing peacekeepers from a dozen countries. The head of the UN mission and his deputy were among more than 100 staff members missing.

It will likely be the largest ever loss on a single day for a UN peacekeeping mission, officials said.

With communications spotty, frantic Haitians in New York and elsewhere struggled to contact their families. Charities also tried to reach their staffs. Virginia-based Ripples of Hope, which supports 150 slum kids at the Good Samaritan School, hoped to locate its director.

"We've been working to feed these kids - now we don't know if they're even alive," said the charity's founder, Harry Covert.

Thousands of other buildings - from the Presidential Palace to humble stick-and-mud shanties - were knocked down by the 7.0-magnitude quake. Ironically, the poorest of the poor - who lived under tarps and in rickety shacks - fared better, when their world began to shake apart, than those who could afford concrete homes.

A young American aid worker who was trapped for about 10hours under the rubble of her mission house was rescued by her frantic husband. Frank Thorp said he drove 100 miles to Port-au-Prince to find his wife, Jillian, then dug for more than an hour to free her and a co-worker from under about a foot of concrete.

Charities large and small jumped to the barricades. The Red Cross and the United Nations unlocked emergency funds and gathered supplies for a "massive" aid operation. The World Bank planned to send $100 million.

Americans rich and poor flooded charities with donations and Twitter with sympathy. From UPS to Walmart to General Motors, corporate America also began chipping in.

Venezuela, Mexico, Italy and France were among those sending food, medicine, water, rescue workers, sniffer dogs and doctors.