report more than two dozen. from eyewitness accounts there is widespread devastation. heavy damage is reported in port-au-prince, the nation's capital. the president's palace has been damaged. we have pictures of what it looked like before the quake and after the devastation. we don't have those yet, but we will bring them to you. the presidential palace we can affirm is in ruins. there are reports now of dead bodies and fears of mass casualties. we have learned at least two americans are believed to be trapped in the rubble. as we said, anderson is on his way to haiti right now. tomorrow he will be on the ground reporting live on the devastation and the rescue efforts and that does it for this special edition of "360." thank you for watching. our coverage continues right now on cnn international. this is cnn breaking news.

i'm colleen mcedwards. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. this is "world report," and we begin with the aftermath of an earthquake, a powerful magnitude 7.0 quake has hit large parts of the haitian capital. fears that hundreds of people are dead in that rubble, and here's that picture of the cloud over the skyline. that is dust and an idea of just how bad this damage is. witnesses say they heard screams, saw panic, saw chaos. and there's a grim list of destruction, too. the national palace heavily damaged. there's a shot of it there. a hospital reportedly collapsed. the u.n. peacekeeper compound devastated, and many peacekeepers are unaccounted for. at least two u.s. mission naear are reported trapped in the rubble. there's the palace before and

after nicely shown there. the popular hotel montana, even the ministry of commerce may be severely damaged as well. now, in the dead of night in haiti, an eerie silence. witnesses report no vehicles moving, few lights on, but there is some hope. an aid work ner in a town 50 kilometers from the capital says there's no damage there. at least one jet made it out of the damaged airport. the u.s. government says the facility is useable and that aid shipments might begin arriving overnight. families are still scrambling for information, of course, but with the power out and communication lines damaged so badly, this is all very, very tough. now, in the u.s. aid groups and the government are getting those relief shipments ready. daybreak will bring more information and perhaps even some more hope, but it is the dark of night there now.

witnesses say the destruction is devastating. a radio and tv host in haiti spoke with cnn's michael holmes. >> reporter: right here on the screen this is a very low-tech, i have to tell you, he's there in haiti. now, first of all, correll, tell me what happened. what was your experience of this earthquake. what happened around you? >> okay. i was a little bit struck. i have to say hi to everybody. i was driving back to my work. i was stuck in the traffic. i was on the phone, and when i -- when i felt like my car was shaking, i thought that some other car was hitting me. when i looked in front of me, i see a lot of people falling down and they were crying, crying, crying for help. after that my phone -- i lost

the communication. the call was dropped. after that i went out of the car and i realized that was an earthquake. >> reporter: your photographs on your facebook page were among the first pictures we saw out of haiti. what sort of level of damage have you seen and what are your friends telling you about how bad this is, how extensive this is? >> to tell you the truth, those pictures that i took with my phone has nothing to do compared to the real damage that i saw after all, because there's a lot of -- really a lot of -- you have to know the country to see really what happened, because there's a lot of big buildings that collapsed and there's a lot of really, really, really big houses that were collapsed, too. the big he thing is there's a

lot of people in those buildings still living, still breathing, but no people to -- no response to help them to get out from where they are. >> reporter: and how well-equipped is haiti to deal with something like this? i know the answer. it's not very well-equipped at all. >> it's not very well-equipped at all. i have to tell you a story. in november 2008 we had a school that collapsed. only a school, one school. and we were not able to give the quick quicker response to this disaster. now it's not one school, it's like every block you find a building that collapsed. >> reporter: what about -- >> people are outside trying to help. >> reporter: what about the toll as far as people are concerned? what have you seen? what have you heard?

>> i heard a lot -- a lot of people praying saying that jesus is coming, saying that we are -- we are -- we need to pray. we need to save our lives by believing in god and something. that is the most thing that i heard, and i he heard that people -- people are saying that we are a poor country. we don't need those kind of situations, because we can't deal with them. i heard the people crying for help because the thing is that when you don't have a car, when you're stuck in the traffic, when there's no word to one or nobody to help you and you're bleeding, you can say anything. >> it's a very, very bad situation. >> all right. again our michael holmes there speaking to mr. pedrei in the hours just after the skwak struck. we'll move on to the story of

the united nations headquarters. this is developing as we speak. the united nations saying that the headquarters have collapsed and that a large number of its staff of still reported missing. they're not accounted for. senior u.n. correspondent richard roth is on the phone for us. he is in new york. richard, how much do you know at this hour? >> well, the united nations is having trouble with its communications, but it's important to note that u.n. peace keeping there may have suffered major damage in terms of personnel and in the property. more important on the people. the u.n.'s peacekeeping chief saying that the u.n. headquarters in port-au-prince collapsed. now, another u.n. official telling me that the building at normal times during the day could house 200 to 250 people, it's a five- hiffive-story buil. they can't confirm how many may be trapped and how many have been killed or injured. soldiers have set up a cordon

around the headquarters building or what's left for it to search for survivors and to prevent any looting. u.n. secretary-general moon, of course, has expressed in a statement as is traditional in any type of crisis like this saying his heart goes out to the people of haiti after this devastating earthquake. he's concerned for the people there and the united nations staff there. they're following developments. the u.n. has about 9,000 peacekeepers there, and they've been there since 2004. they've had for the last two decades an essential presence there trying to keep peace and help in the development of the country. u.n. has other agencies there that also provide assistance. secretary-general moon on wednesday morning will brief the press along with other senior u.n. leaders, but the u.n.'s pea peacekeeping department saying right now at the u.n. peacekeeping headquarters at the moment a large number of

personnel remain unaccounted for. >> that peacekeeping contingent comes from different countries, canada, france, brazil, ecuador, just to name a few. the u.n. not saying how many are still missing, but remind us what their mandate has been there and how important they have been in helping maintain stability in haiti and helping to retrain the police force, all of that stuff. >> you mentioned the keyword there. stability. it's known as the united nations stabilization mission in haiti. this is what the u.n. does. it doesn't get the publicity at many times, but that's what they do going into countries with thousands of soldiers from around the world thrown together from different countries, and they have been in haiti for years now. the u.n. has a special representative there. they haven't been able to contact him. bill clinton was a special

envoy, and he was speaking more optimistically about haiti saying he thought there was a chance for the most impov riched nation in this hemisphere to start turning the corner. the secretary-general says he's shocked at the scale of devastation in port-au-prince at the u.n. headquarters and at other u.n. buildings. the u.n. says other u.n. installations are damaged. he's awaiting news. bill clinton, the u.n. special envoy has called the secretary-general to discuss what they call the unfolding disaster, exchanged initial information. they're going to talk again wednesday morning, and the secretary-general spoke with u.n. ambassador susan rice to coordinate. we'll have more updates overnight or when the sun comes up to know how devastating for the u.n. which is there to help the people of haiti, they may be the most devastated by what's happened with the quake. >> absolutely. richard roth there for us in new york working the the phones

late at night. thank you so much. appreciate it. we have another eyewitness in haiti who is on the line with us now. he's on the phone. he's just outside port-au-prince, i believe. ramon, tell us what you felt and heard and saw when the quake struck. >> good morning. i'm sorry. i was in my office. i was feeling it because the building was shaking so badly. >> ramone, i have to interrupt you there because we're getting a really terrible echo on your phone line. i don't know if you're on speaker or not. if you are, maybe take it down. but it may just be that

communications are so difficult and we're just not able to hear that well. can you try again? >> we can try it again. >> yeah. sorry, ramone, we have to try you again. it's not clear enough to hear. i he apologize to our viewers for that, but you understand the logistics and communications are extremely difficult. we'll get back if we can get it sorted out. haiti's ambassador to washington says he's very afraid, afraid that many, many people have been killed in this quake. ramone joseph says his country needs help from the rest of the world now. he made the appeal by phone on cnn's "situation room." >> haiti as is being portrayed all the time, the poorest country in the western hemisphere now has been hit by

the worst catastrophe. so i'm calling on all friends of haiti and people who are listening to me to please come to our aid. >> a plea for aid right there. the u.s. president, barack obama, is speaking out on the haiti earthquake as well. he says -- >> the u.s. state department has activated what it calls a disaster response plan. it says that a task force will work through the night on this. secretary of state hillary clinton is on an asia-pacific tr trip. here's what she said. >> we are still gathering information about this catastrophic earthquake, the point of impact, its effect on the people of haiti. the united states is offering our full assistance to haiti and to others in the region.

we will be providing both civilian and military disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, and our prayers are with the people who have suffered, their families, and their loved ones. >> let's get a closer look at what else is happening on the aid front. the interamerican development bank is making $200,000 in aid immediately available for haiti. other countries getting ready to help as well. the french foreign minister addressed solidarity and sympathy as well with the haitian people. they say the ministry is working on getting aid there as well. canada's prime minister steven harper says canada is ready to help in this time of need. venezuela is reportedly sending a 50-member humanitarian assistance team. now, a list of organizations working to help haiti is on cnn's impact your world page. we've got the international red cross there, we have save the

children there as well as others. you can take action and help the people through one of these groups if you are inclined. there's a complete list on our web page there. it's great information for you as a resource if you're interested at cnn.com/impact. this is believed to be the largest earthquake ever recorded in haiti. the first major quake in 16 years. a 6.7 magnitude quake struck there in 1984. minor earthquakes are pretty common in the caribbean. it has a long heft of destructive quakes. a dozen of magnitude 7 or greater have hit the region in the past 500 years. among the worst was back in 1946. it was 8.1. that was the magnitude on that quake. that was a big one. off the northeast coast of the dominican republic. more than 1600 people were killed in that quake. now, here's why you see a good

little bit of size he mcactivity there. a major fault line cuts right through the dominican republic. there are two deep ocean trenches, both of them prone to earthquakes. one of them is just north and one of them is east of the island of hiss pan ya. they say this major fault is similar to the one that caused the devastating 2004 tsunami in south asia. jennifer joins us from the international weather center. she's going to give us a look at what haiti faces weatherwise he in the coming hours. rain in haiti is not a good thing, because there's so much deforestation there and so much infrastructure that when it rains in port-au-prince you can be knee-deep in water in seconds because it has nowhere to go. >> that's right. it has nowhere for any of that water to go. i'm passionate about what's

happening across haiti. when it happens during hurricane season, of course you really feel for the people because they really just don't have anything to work with. of course, that area is so deforested. let's update you on the earthquake situation. magnitude, 7.0. very close to port-au-prince. since then we've seen 24 aftershocks. look at some of them ranging from 5.1 to 5.9. this 5.9 is enough to do enough damage. these are aftershocks that have happened since the initial one took place around 5:00. just to give you an idea, of course, this is the strongest to hit haiti. as i had, 24 aftershocks. the last major earthquake to happen for hispanola. that happened in the dominican republic. that was towards the east of haiti. this area not actually -- it's not a surprise to see an earthquake happening there.

we have a strike slip earthquake. this is basically a horizontal movement. when this happens this is what causes the problems, especially in the densely populated areas. it causes buildings to crumble. a lot of centers are shanty homes built with cinder block. we have those plates moving in the opposite motion, and there is is the fault line along the area just south of port-au-prince. the good news is for the weather temperatures are going to be mild, and that's great news. we're expecting high temperatures in the lower 30s. a lot of people without electricity and power. low temperatures in the 20s, and we're also expecting dry conditions for the search effort that's going to get under way starting tomorrow. we'll talk more in a moment. back to you. >> a little bit of good news there. jennifer, thank you so much. updating you on the latest developments, the u.n. is saying a number of personnel are missing. they are missing in haiti. we'll have the late heest for you coming up. plus, witnesses describe haiti's capital city as a chaotic scene

of total disaster. we'll look at some of the latest images coming into us right here on cnn.

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head and the rest of her body was trapped under the fence, under a block wall. she had obviously -- i think she was dead. she had blood coming out of her eyes and nose and ears. >> a very graphic description there from one of the eyewitnesses who are helping us to cover the story in haiti. while it's difficult to get communications and pictures, we're getting those kinds of reports from eyewitnesses. we're following the wires, of course, and i want to say that the associated press moved an urnlt wire here saying the haiti capital largely destroyed in the quake. casualties severe and widespread, that is according to the associates press moving on the wires right now. to bring you up-to-date further the headquarters of the u.n. peacekeeping mission in haiti has collapsed. just hours ago the worst earthquake struck outside the capital.

u.n. officials say many peacekeepers are lost there and unaccounted for and missing. the building that houses citibank's offices has collapsed. 12 employees unaccounted for there. an aid worker says the walls of houses have fallen into the streets in some cases. witnesses report hearing cries for help in the rubble. the quake has been follow by more than a dozen strong aftershocks, and that has created more panic and fear in the streets. the number of casualties absolutely not known at this point. we just do not know. we've got reporters rushing there as we speak. other agencies do as well, but it is nighttime there. the u.s. state department says it has been told to expect -- this is a quote -- serious loss of life. well, the people in the middle of the catastrophe have been doing an amazing job of dealing with whatever they have to deal with this this disaster and keeping us up to date at the same time. again, we're pulling from many,

many sources here in the early hours. she's helping us keep track of all of the social media content that we've been receiving. i have to say, you know, i didn't think we'd be getting that much, but there are extraordinary accounts here. >> absolutely. we're getting a sense of what happened, just a small sense of what happened from i reports that we want to share with you. i need to warn you that some of the images are quite disturbing. these are from i reporter bryan corey. his mother-in-law, phyllis, is a missionary in port-au-prince. he's been sharing her pictures with us. you can see collapsed walls. they drive through the capital city. in this one we're about to show a dead body is lying in the corner. and here in the next one, one of the missionaries is treated a woman's injured foot. you can check these as well as other i reports out at ireport.com. if you have anything to stair

with us upload. this video was uploads to the video website. it looks like it was shot after the quake hit. you can see the clouds of dust from the collapsed buildings billowing in the distance. we're all picking up some powerful firsthand accounts on twitter. richard morris, a well-known musician who manages the hotel wrote -- >> here's a chilling i-report to share with you from yvonne trim bell who has worked as a missionary in haiti for more

than 30 years. here's what she writes, quote -- >> quite a chilling account giving us a sense of what it was to go through this experience, this ordeal besides the loss of life, this earthquake has also wiped out a keiland mark. this is a recent picture of the presidential palace. this magnificent structure was built back in the early 1900s

and a main tourist attraction. look at it now. this is one of the most striking images posted on twitter and reposted by many users. the palace is now left in ruins after this devastating earthquake. colleen, we do know that the president is safe. we're hearing that some of the other century-old homes near the national palace have collapsed. >> thank you very much for that. appreciate it. well, response teams are preparing to go in there and help the people of haiti, but even so, officials are warning that the death toll here is likely going to be high. this is an i am pov riched nation and it just did not have the infrastructure to withstand this powerful of an earthquake. we're going to have more on that. a he detailed look at the terrain, and it is extraordinary stuff when we come back. ♪

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>> there's difficult images to watch as we get more and more pictures in from the scene. there are fears now of hundreds, even thousands of casualties in haiti after the worst earthquake to hit that nation in centuries. exact numbers vary. hard to come by here. it is clear from the images like these ones that a major catastrophe has hit. now, a dusty cloud covered the entire skyline of the capital of pourt a port-au-prince. this is an extraordinary little bit of video here showing the dust coming up from one of the slums down below. beneath collapsed buildings, chaos in the streets, cries and screams from under the piles of rubble. hotels, homes, hospitals, even the national palace are

collapsed. the u.n.'s pieeacekeeping compod has been damaged and many personnel are unaccounted for. the secretary-general says his heart goes out to the victims of this disaster. it's been followed by more than a dozen aftershocks and some have been quite strong. that could increase the threat of even more of the buildings that are already damaged a little bit coming down. so there's still a great deal of damage there in the night in port-au-prince. and the u.s. military says it's preparing massive humanitarian aid shipments. pourt a port-au-prince is probably one of the worst places to be struck by an earthquake. it's reported from there, and it's the way the slums are laid out that's really concerning here. we put together some google maps that i hope show you why. let's start with google map of

petionville. this is a suburb east of port-au-prince. this is the wealthy suburb. it's going to hit right there, the enl of the slum of port-au-prince. i wanted you to say this portion here, because you really get a sense of how all these little shacks are stacked up in the hillside hillside. you see how they lie over the crest of all the hills. this is very hilly. and these little cinder blockhouses are in some cases stacked up inside the hills, almost one on top of the other. you can barely walk on foot through some of these areas, and this is a massive, massive area of port-au-prince that looks just like this. i want to give you a wider view of port awe prince to get a sense of how sprawling the slums are below petionville into

port-au-prince looking at the sprawling slums. we move along here farther. you see it flatten out a little bit as we get towards the sea and the gulf. you see pretty good roads through, some bigger roads up this way. you see one running up here through the center as we get down on a more grid-like fashion closer again to the water, what you see over there. now i want to take you in closer here. right down at that water level i show you port-au-prince and here's sun city, and this is one of the biggest slums in this hemisphere. 200 to 300,000 people live there in absolutely terrible conditions. it's so low and people are crammed in so close to the water here. there's great danger in terms of earthquakes and tsunamis and the

like. this is a high area of crime in port-au-prince as well. there are some 30 gangs estimated to control the strit streets here. very little police presence. no stores. no shops. no infrastructure. very little electricity. so i he hope that gives you a lay of the land and the extent to which the city is filled with these slums. terrible construction, but just the density of the population in a city that is absolutely desperate even at the best of times i have to say. the full extent of the damage in haiti is still not known. we're going to bring you reaction from around the world as the international community continues to prepare to help. that, and much more, coming up on our breaking news coverage. stay with cnn.

it was the largest

earthquake i've experienced here in 14 years, and the ground was pitching and it went on for several minutes. we had a stone house and a concrete brick house, and it was groaning and moaning a little bit. we really have no damage, but the entire community just went into an uproar. you could hear people calling to one another because the entire neighborhood felt it. >> that was a charity worker there describing an earthquake that has brought haiti to its knees. associated press photographers who are getting on the scene now are filing wire reports says that port-au-prince is largely destroyed. with phone lines down, communications patchy, it is really hard to get any exact numbers or real sense of it right now. witnesses are saying there are dead bodies in the streets and that survivors are crying for help from in the rubble.

now, the u.n. compound has collapsed. many peacekeepers are unaccounted for. the building that houses citibank's offices was also destroyed. 12 of its employees are reported missing at this time. well, leaders around the word are starting to respond to the disaster in haiti. former u.s. president bill clinton is the united nations special envoy. he says -- >> the u.n. secretary-general says my heart goes out to the people of haiti after this devastating earthquake. at this time of tragedy i'm very concerned for the people of haiti and also for the many united nations staff who serve there. i' the musician wyclef jean and

the author are haitian americans and both are tireless advocates for this impovrished country. >> i was on the phone with a friend in haiti, and she says, i think an earthquake is coming. the phone goes off. after that i texted, and it took 45 minutes to get a text back. she said she was outside with her kids, and that the buildings have just started collapsing. so this is how this conversation went on. right now i'm in the process of looking for a young rapper that went to haiti to do a mix tape. his name is jimmy o. it came through a text that he died. he was part of yele haiti the

foundation. i urge everyone who is listening right now that knows how great this kid is in hate haiti we need to verify this information. >> have you had had any luck getting in touch with your family? >> no. we've mostly tried to patch together information based on others we've heard from, but i have family in kafur, which some is saying what the epicenter. no calls are going through, and we haven't heard anything. >> it's stunning for those of us who know haiti and love it and have been there a lot, to think that haiti now has to go through this. what haitians have been forced to deal with for decades now, it's one thing after another. >> i mean, it's definitely one thing after another. i think right now the most important thing is as you're on cnn, you're talking about it, hillary clinton is talking about it, giving help, president obama is giving help.

keep in mind, there's 4 million haitians that are outside of haiti, so i think this is the time for the haitians that are outside of haiti to step up and to call their councilmen, call the congress and say, we need a state of emergency for our country. this is the most important thing. as we sit here right now, there are people in the dark that are dead, and we ain't going to know what happens until the morning. so my urgency right now is really a cry of freedom saying we really need a state of emergency like right now. you know, the hurricane. we just came from the hurricane. it seems like it's a disaster after disaster, but i think the haitians that are in america now, we need to step up. >> as wyclef said, it's nightfall there, it's nighttime there, the same time as the east coast of the united states. you're out of electricity, no phone service, maybe a collapsed building and one man i talked to a moment ago said he hasn't

heard any heavy equipment moving through, no bulldozers coming. one can only imagine what this night is like for a huge number of people on the ground in haiti. >> this is probably one of the darkest nights in our history. i think only when the sun comes up will we get a sense of it. this is a place that's really not equipped for this kind of rescue. i'm sure there are people who might have been saved if they were gotten to in time. but it's going to be astronomical, and i just want to echo what wyclef says. we need an extraordinary amount of help in the days and months and years to come. i think this whole -- the whole country basically is going to need rebuilding, and people who are the poorest of the poor, least able to withstand something like this are suffering. we absolutely need help. we need desperately, desperately

help. >> that help is apparently coming. governments and aid agencies around the world have been offering, they have risen and said they will send disaster teams to haiti. but if you're part of the relief effort, what actually happens when you get on the ground, especially in a situation like this where i'm telling you, the roads are no good at the best of times. i can only imagine how difficult it will be to get aid moving now. we'll speak to a veteran of disaster relief for haiti. we'll be back in a moment. don't go away.

the building looks like the top half of that building was lifted up and set down again. a woman examine child, an elderly man being helped along. let's listen. difficult images there. those just coming in to us from reuters. we've been told by eyewitnesses

that there are bodies in the street and still people in the rubble, and those pictures unfortunately confirm the worst of everyone's fears i'm afraid. still daytilight there when the pictures were shot just before the dinner hour, just before 5:00 p.m. local in haiti. we're talking about a country of some 9 million people, the city of port-au-prince with 2 million people in it. it's hard to know, because there's so many slums throughout the city. it's impossible to really get a fix on the population there. we will, of course, bring you any more video that we get in as we're now starting to get it from some of the agencies and some of the people now getting there on the ground. well, haiti is certainly no stranger to disaster, no stranger to tragedy, both man hated and natural. tom forman looks at the people and geography of the one of the world's poorest countries. >> if you travel from the united

states down southeast here past the bahamas and cuba, you come to haiti down here. it shares an island with the dominican republic in this area. that's the first part to look in the geography of it. the human geography. 9-plus million people, half who lives in cities or towns and have about a 53% literacy rate. there are physical geographies to consider in all of this. this is the epicenter of the quake, but you can see that much of the country is actually quite mountainous. it's about the size of maryland, which is one of the smaller states in the united states, of course, and it's always been prone to earthquakes and hurricanes. moving in a little closer to the city itself, we see more about the economic landscape here and the challenges that poses. look at the density of the population here. this area was intended for about 50,000 to 250,000 people. it has more than 2 million living here. the economy, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. 80% of the people here live well

below the poverty line, some on only $2 a day or even less. very difficult living. as you spread out, you see why it's so hard for all of these people in this area to respond to this disaster because of persistent problems that have made it difficult for haiti to even be a solid, stable place on the best of days many times. they had four tropical storms that swept through in 2008, wiped out many roads and a lot of the infrastructure they tried to rebuild. they have a 200-year history of civil and political unrest with very few periods of long stability by anyone's measure. it's always been made it tough for haiti. it will make it even tougher for this country to recover now. >> tom forman walking us through it here. judging from past disaster in haiti, this rescue operation will be slow. their government is not equipped to handle this disaster.

cnn's david mattingly saw this firsthand during a much, much smaller disaster that happened back in 2008. listen to this. >> listen to these reports coming in. i can't tell you how distressing it is to hear this, because we can't overstate how vulnerable port-au-prince is to a natural disaster like this. you have so many shanty towns around port-au-prince built up hillsides. very shoddy construction. the government does not have any kind of ability to police any sort of building codes. when i was there in 2008, we were looking at a single school that collapsed because the concrete was too brittle and there was not enough steel reinforcement in that. in that single building collapse 90 children were killed and 150 others escaped, many with cuts and broken bones. in terms of a rescue effort, the government was not able to get in there except for bare manpower, going in with hands

and picks and shovels. the sophisticated equipment had to come in from overseas. we saw u.s. crews and rescue teams from france in there with specially trained dogs, special electronic equipment to go into this rubble to find people. it was a process that took days even for this one single building. if we're looking at and we probably are widespread devastation like this, who knows how long it's going to take for these rescue efforts to get mobilized to get on the ground and to actually start doing some good there on such a wide scale. it's really mind-boggling to think about it right now based on what we hear so far. another thing, though, is of the children that survived, the one that is needed medical attention, they quickly overwhelmed the system in port-au-prince. there was 150 kids who got out of that school who needed some sort of medical treatment. they went to the largest hospital in port-au-prince. i visited there. the emergency wards were completely overrun with casualties at that time. the children were able to

receive just basic care, setting some bones and putting casts on and putting some sort of medication and possibly treating some of the wounds. beyond that any sort of specialized treatment had to come from somewhere else. haiti is not prepared for this kind of widespread disaster. they're not prepared even for a single disaster like i saw in 2008 involving one building with many, many casualties. >> david mattingly there as he reported on a school collapse in petionville, nothing of this scale. as david said the former french colony has seen more its share of disaster, more than it's share of hard times. lisa takes a look at hate takes history. >> founded by freed slaves in 1804, haiti is the world's oldest black republic, but the poorest country in the western hemisphere with almost 80% of the population of 9 million

people living in poverty. more than half get by on less than a dollar a day. the country is still rebuilding from the last series of natural disasters. four different tropical storms struck the island nation in 2008, leaving the country's fragile infrastructure near total collapse. haiti he's history is one of political instability and violence. after decades of dictatorship there was the first freely elected in 1990 and he was ousted and reinstated with u.s. support only to be forced out of the country and into exile in 2004. the country returned to constitutional rule in 2006. a force of some 8,000 u.n. peacekeepers remains in port-au-prince, but haiti has

been relatively calm. cnn, atlanta. >> as rescue teams search for survivo survivors, we're going to look at the weather conditions they're likely to face. your complete forecast is coming up right here on cnn.

rut gerz is showing a scene

of chaos in the streets of port-au-prince. some school children clearly traumatized in this event. a person there that appears to be trapped. a building with its top almost looks like it was removed and set back down. a very typical street scene right there. a mother and child moving through the rubble looking stunned. absolute devastation we're fold in the haitian capital of port-au-prince. journalists for the associated press are already describing the capital saying that there is desperation as largely destroyed. that's a quote from the associated press right now. we've got little official information -- little official confirmation of anything coming out right now at this hour and because of the situation here. what we're seeing and hearing is

alarming. witnesses say they see bodies in the streets of the capital and sadly the video confirms that. tens of thousands of people are pleading for help. left homeless in the destruction. there are many reports of people who are buried in the rubble including at least two american missionaries. some of the most prominent buildings in the city have collapsed. the national palace has been badly affected. you see the to which of it just sunk in there. the president is reported to be safe. he was apparently not in the palace at the time. the u.n. peacekeeping compound has been destroyed we're told. power outages, communication lines are cut. that is all making it a struggle to get any information on survivors. the u.s. says it hopes to begin flying in aid perhaps as soon as overnight. france, canada, venezuela, and other countries are also pledging immediate aid. well, meteorologist jennifer

delgado joins us now in the international weather center for us. what's in the forecast here? that's going to be crucial. >> it looks like we're going to deal with favorable weather. if something like this happened during hurricane season or tropical season, the rainy season, this would be a much worse situation. overall we're looking at quiet weather, and that's great news for the cleanup effort. we want to take you back and give you updated information on the earthquake. of course, it was a magnitude 7.0. this is actually the epicenter right in the mountains. as we widen this view up for us, you can see how close it is to port-au-prince. this is why we see so much damage happen in that area. this is what we call a strike slip fault and that produces that horizontal movement whch. when that happens, you see a lot of damage. this is the problem here. this area is home to 1.5 million people, and this is going to be bad news because a lot of homes are poorly structured. they're not even set up really to deal with the rainy season or

a tropical storm pushing through. as i step out of the way, i want to give you an idea on the strike slip earthquake. here's the two plates moving to the west and one to the east. this is the fault line stopping just short of the dominican republic. as i said, this area you not usual to see earthquakes like this. the last time we saw one this strong was back in 1946, and that was an 8.0. just to give you an idea, the areas that felt this earthquake, in the red this is the hot zone. this is where they felt the brunt of that earthquake over towards the green area, a little less of the feeling of the aftershock. this was felt over towards cuba, virgin islands and even reports of northern portions of south america. this was a strong system. those aftershocks range from 5.9 to 5.1. 5.9 can do significant damage. when one comes in at 7.0, that's

a big problem. here's the satellite imagery, dry conditions and high temperatures climbing into the lower 30s with low temperatures in the 20s. that's the good news. favorable weather over the next three days. back over to you. you really feel for the peechl people of haiti. >> absolutely, the dead of night there and obviously a difficult, difficult time. thank you so much. appreciate it. once again, we want to show you some of the latest pictures from rut gerz showing the scenes of destruction at port-au-prince hit by he a 7.0 earthquake rocking the city. associated press reporters and photographers on the scene describe the city as devastated. many major landmarks have been affect affected, but most importantly, of course, the people. some 2 million people living crammed into this city in shanty

towns and the like struggling now in the night to survive. thanks for watching. i'm colleen mcedwards. we're going to follow the story, of course, throughout the night, and as dawn breaks in haiti. stay with cnn for more. we have more, so keep it right here on cnn.