Transcripts For WMAR 20100114 : vimarsana.com

toni tonight on nightline, the day after. crisis in the streets, thousands missing or feared dead, entire neighborhoods destroyed, and a desperate search for survivors trapped in the rubble. on the ground. tonight, we re inside the quake zone with stunning first hand accounts of this disaster, amid scenes of complete catastrophe. country in chaos. mills in need of relief, but will it get there in time. we ll tell you how to help. a special edition of nightline, after the quake, starts right now. announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with martin bashir and cynthia mcfadden in new york city, and terry moran in washington, this is nightline, january 13th, 2010. good evening, i m terry moran, and we begin tonight with, of course, the day after, on the island nation of haiti. the first day of a humanitarian effort that will take years, decades, perhaps, and a grim reality of life without the basics for millions of people. we know much more tonight about those horrifying moments the earth shook, and what has happened in the immediate aftermath. kate snow traveled into haiti today by truck to survey the scene. she s in the dominican republic tonight. kate? reporter: terry, just outside the haitian border, the focus is about trying to get aid into those victims. we re at a military base, and you see a helicopter over my shoulder. they are going in and out of haiti, evacuated some of the wounded, as well. all of the good efforts in the world to try to bring relief to haiti may not be enough. we need more people down here! reporter: the quake struck right before sundown on tuesday, 7.0 on the richter scale, almost directly under the haitian capital of port-au-prince. it hit would warning and with devastating force. three alive. don t let go of the wall. reporter: christine webb was in haiti on a church retreat. and there the earth actually split. it was unreal. reporter: bob poff works for the salvation army. if it wasn t bad enough for the earthquake, now they re burning, and people are losing everything they have. reporter: cindy mcmartin runs a cemetery in port-au-prince funded by the cross world mission. it was like the floor of our house was rippling up and down. everything was falling off the walls. reporter: you will weez st. jermaine is a pastor. suddenly, the house started to shake. i just run out, and when i went out, i see my kids was in panic. so, within 15 minutes, the whole city was on the street. reporter: when the quake was all over, this city was left in ruins. buildings toppled, the power out. and after the sunset, the rescues began. hey, show him where they are. he s going to flash the light, okay? reporter: the u.n. compound, destroyed. in this building alone, at least 16 people killed, 56 people injured. seven medevaced, and they expect that number to grow. we spoke with matt marek of the american red cross via skype. it s extremely difficult to estimate the scale. the magnitude was just immense. the earthquake yesterday. and we spent all day and night in the streets just trying to give assistance. it is a catastrophe. it is terrible. the access to port-au-prince is impossible by car. reporter: around the city, people began the painful process of trying to dig out. you know, you are hearing the grief of people as they realize they ve lost people. they can t find their children. but then again, you suddenly hear cries come out, people who are rescuing other people from the rubble as somebody comes out alive. reporter: their own medical facilities damaged, doctors without bordered set up trauma centers in parking lots, treating hundreds of patient many with broken bones and burns from cooking gas containers that exploded during the earthquake. the best we can offer them at the moment is first aid care and stabilization. the reality of what we re seeing is severe traumas. head wounds, crushed limbs. reporter: the red cross has been helping haitians for decades, but today, their offices were in ruins. they improvised, tending to their own wounded as well as the community s. entire mountainsides of communities have come down. reporter: outside the capital city, cindy mcmartin, and her husband who run a small seminary, are on their own to deal with the tragedy. two of the buildings on their campus collapsed, trapping several of their students. we are hopeful we can find them alive, but the chances are very slim, so but we are still doing what we can. to find them. reporter: around the world, as word of the earthquake spread, government and nations began to react. the president spoke early this afternoon. i have directed my administration to respond with a swift, coordinate and aggressive effort to save lives. reporter: navy ships filled with relief supplied departed from norfolk, virginia. and not just the u.s. france, china, even iceland prepared today to send assistance to haiti. in virginia, task force one, the fairpax county search and rescue team, gathered their supplies up and prepared to ship out. but as the world reacted, the city of port-au-prince struggled. early estimates of the death toll say it could reach into the tens of thousands. and around the city, people struggled to cope. a lot of roads are blocked so even equipment that needs to get into houses that are built on steep inclines and mountains are going to have a lot of difficulty, a lot of search and rescue is going to need to be done by hand. reporter: there are stories of hope. 23-year-old american aid worker jillian thorpe was buried in an avalanche of con treat and steel, trapped with a coworker in the basement of their church charity during the earthquake. but she was very much alive. somehow, she managed to call her husband frank, 100 miles away. he jumped into his car and drove as fast as he could, arrived just in time to see jillian s hand barely sticking out of the rubble. he described what he saw to cbs. i jumped into the hole and i was able to see her wave her hand. i couldn t see her whole body. she was just waving and i could hear her voice. i mean, you know, i couldn t hold it together, buzz all she was saying was, just hold it together. just get me out of here. reporter: frank started digging by hand, brick by brick. an hour later, he pulled jillian free, bruised and battered, but safe. at the seminary, romel a 30-year-old student, was pulled out alive and unharmed. it was literally a miracle. reporter: but still, with the entire school so afraid of aftershocks, they flee into the school s courtyard at any sign of a tremor. they re anticipating days and nights without food or water. these people have broken bones. it s gruesome. it s horrible. and we have run out of medical supplies up here. what we re doing right now is just washing wounds and giving tylenol and trying to do the best we can can. reporter: we left haiti tonight at dark and it is quite dark over there. power is out across much of the country. the red cross saying tonight, terry, that they are out of supplies on hand. they re hoping for a shipment in the morning. terry? kate, this is the second night there, that the people of haiti have to endure. you describe it, power out, the darkness. what is the feeling down on the ground there? reporter: i think there s a lot of fear. we witnessed it ourselves when we were in haiti earlier today. we went to a sand pit where a truck had been buried by an avalanche during the earthquake. it was sort of surrounded by a wall of sand, it fell and buried this truck and someone inside of it. as we was standing there, an earthquake aftershock happened and another wall of sand came tumbling down and people were running away and screaming. there is so much fear of the unknown, and just a country on edge tonight. terrible trauma in addition to a disaster. kate, thanks very much for that. good luck down there and stay safe. and now we turn to dan harris who today toured the devastated streets of port-au-prince, where he saw first-hand the destruction and heard the horrifying stories of survivors. he reports from the airport don t tonight. dan? reporter: terry, we ve had a very sad first few hours here on the ground. we have witnessed unmitigated misery, including scenes that you might be able to see behind me of scores of haitians who are now very suddenly refugees in their own country. we scrambled to get onto a flight into the quake zone this afternoon, flying over neighborhoods that at first glance look deceptively unharmed. we touchdown to find and airport in disarray. the air traffic control tower was taken out in the birth quake, so all the aid flights had to land using instinct and eyesight. hundreds of foreigners including these american youth missionaries are trying to get out of the country. as night fell, we went out onto the streets. we saw hundreds of families sleeping in the open air. their homes destroyed, they have no other choice. this is a scene, we re told, that is replicated on block after block in this overpopulated, underdeveloped city. we saw badly injured people turned away at the hospitals, they say, and clearly in need of help. your cousin. what happened? reporter: his cousin was in the house when it fell down and you can see, she s not doing well. they turned her away at the hospital. totally destroyed their house. i m going to ask if this is their only choice. they don t have any other place to sleep. must be very difficult to have little children out here reporter: we saw a son stain use worship service on the side of the road as we headed back to the airport to stay the night. people in this supremely unlucky country, the recipients of cruel blow followed by even crueller blows, apparently have not let tragedy diminish faith. thus far, few if any reports of looting or riots or crime in the aftermath of the earthquake. in fact, in our time out on the streets tonight, we found people to be open and welcoming. the major question is, how long will that last? and the variable most likely is, how soon can sufficient aid get in here? that aid may be what staves off any widespread unrest. terry? race against time there. thanks to dan harris for that extraordinary report. when we come back, robin roberts has just arrived in haiti. we ll have her first impressions from the quake zone, plus, the agonizing wait to hear from loved ones here at home. what s going on? 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reporter: terry, still a lot of activity here at the airport at this hour. a number of military aircraft just arriving here, including a group from homestead air force base in florida. their job is to assess the damage on the ground here. we were able to leave the airport a short time ago. what we witnessed, horrific. that s the word. absolutely horrific. everywhere that we turn. in fact, we saw a number of rescue attempts in progress. there was one woman trapped underneath the rubble. her rescuers trying desperately to get to her and we could hear her voice and she was instructing the rescuers, telling them, go right, go left. they were able to get her water, but when we left, she was still well buried underneath the rubble. and as we attempted to come back here to the airport, all of a sudden, people filled the street. they were running everywhere. we asked what was happening, and someone said a wave, a wave is coming. of course, they meant a tsunami, which was not the case, but terry, you can imagine, it doesn t take much. everyone is just so much on edge here in port-au-prince. terry? thanks, robin. she s going to have much more from haiti on good morning america tomorrow. the epicenter of this disaster is in the caribbean, of course. but this tragedy has already touch sod many here at home in america. tens of thousands of americans live in haiti. hundreds of thousands of americans are of haitian decent. so many of them are just waiting. across america, there is anguish and desperation. as thousands frantically try to reach loved ones in the devastation and chaos of haiti. i lost two friends this morning and i just thought this was a whole nightmare but i got up and this is real. reporter: there are more than half a million haitian-americans, and many other americans have relatives living there, as aid workers, missionaries and teachers. in illinois, the distance and the silence seem unbearable. i don t know where she is right now. i really don t know. i don t know what to do in this situation. if i can fly, i would fly myself, just fly to get there, but i cannot do it. reporter: in every haitian home and community, people are working their phones. i got only busy sound. reporter: the scene in boston. i have a sister there, and i went over there in july to spend time with them. i don t know if i will have a chance to see them again. reporter: in texas, ginny evans daughter michelle just went to haiti with a group, and her mother bears a terrible burden. i don t want to bury another child, and i ve already buried one, so i m not looking forward to this. reporter: but ginny is undaunted. when you don t know, what else can you do? you sort of swing the old texas dial, round the wagons up and hope for the best. reporter: in new york city, home to a thriving haitian-american community, a tiny radio station in brooklyn has miraculously maintained contact with a radio station signal still broadcasting in port-au-prince. we re not sure this is a catastrophe of major proportions. all day, people pleaded for information. reporter: so many families are touched by this tragedy. this is matt and amanda poulter with their adopted little girl, 4-year-old mya. she lives in an orphanage in haiti. the poulters were hoping to bring her home in early february. they were just waiting on her passport. mya is now legally our daughter, however, and if we were in haiti, we d be able to bring her home, but we re in the final stages now where we need to get the authorization to get a passport. and then we can bring her home. reporter: matt and amanda have been waiting three years to bring mya to iowa. the child knows them as her hoped for family. the first pictures we have of her is when she was 19 months old. we watched her grow up. it s been hard to see her go through those years but we ve enjoyed it. reporter: now, like so many others, the poulters are waiting and praying. there s been no word. the orphanage is about a mile away from the school that we just enrolled all of the children in, and, so, immediately we were thinking, is she safe, where was she when this happened, who was she with, did she have somebody to be there for her? reporter: four other children from mya s orphanage are waiting for their adoptions to be completed, and all to families from iowa. tonight, across america, for so many families, haiti s agony has hit home. waiting and waiting to hear from loved ones. when we come back, martha raddatz reports from the caribbean on the role the u.s. government, our military, will play in this massive humanitarian response. is that little cup really enough? try it!! 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