Haiti earthquake

Haiti has to be the most luckless place on the planet.

 

Pulling in pics from Twitter as I find them . . .


http://twitpic.com/xukcr


http://twitpic.com/xuwst


http://twitpic.com/xuwfz


http://twitpic.com/xuri1 ... this used to be a house.

This is going to be another huge event for Twitter, I think. Found all those pics via Twitter and Twitpic.

 

Another aftershock at 8-ish p.m., this one a 4.6.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rkag.php

There were a bunch of precursor quakes to the east of Hispaniola in the ocean surrounding Puerto Rico over the past few days, too.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Maps/10/290_20.php

 

Interesting point being made on the news I'm watching: Because Haiti is so desperately poor, there are already numerous aid agencies on the ground there. Assuming they've made it through relatively unscathed, they'll be in a position to start helping almost immediately.

Guantanamo is 60 miles away from Haiti, as well. If the U.S. has anything there it can send, it can do so with some speed.

 

AP just moved all those twitter pics. Interesting that they hit twitter first.

 

Close enough that Gitmo was put under a tsunami warning that only expired a few minutes ago.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inqro/4269736421/

 

The fault that let go was a slip fault and not a thrust fault, therefore no massive displacement of water.

Thank Tebow for that. A 20-foot wall of water sweeping over South Florida would not be good. (I know I'm exaggerating, but this should be a reminder that the Caribbean is very seismically active.)

 

Another aftershock: 5.4. (Edit: which was preceded within 20 minutes by two other aftershocks, both at 5.2.)

Damn.

CNN reporting just now that the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince has collapsed and that UN peacekeeping forces on the ground have had to step in to protect against looters.

 

They're saying it was a very shallow earthquake, which increases the scale of damage. I think it also reduces the tsunami effect ... but I might be completely wrong on that.

Gotta be the closest thing to hell on earth right about now.

 

None of the three news networks are covering the quake right now.

Hannity was talking to Ann Coulter, Maddow was talking to Michael Beschloss, and Larry King was on about Conan and Leno.

:

 

Part of the problem there is that there's just not much information coming out of Haiti right now. Phones are down and between the fact that I haven't seen any more current photos and the fact that CNN lost a Skype connection last hour, the Internet may have also hosed.