A Week After Quake, Haitians Still Looking for Aid

Because Haiti has struggled for decades with political instability and natural disasters, 60 percent of buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances, causing mass casualties in the quake according to the mayor of Port-au-Prince.

Kenneth Merten the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti explained some of the difficulties to the NewsHour “Port-au-Prince particularly is destroyed. I mean, there are certain blocks that are vaporized. There's nothing there but dust and debris.”

The United Nations Security Council agreed Tuesday to send an additional 3,500 peacekeeping troops into the country even after losing 150.

“Parliament has collapsed,” the Haitian president, René Préval, told the Miami Herald newspaper.

“The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”

While no official count of the dead is available the Red Cross is reporting up to three million people are affected by the quake.

Americans mobilize to help

	Click here to see the president's statement on the Haiti earthquake.

Immediately after the earthquake, President Obama extended "the deep condolences and unwavering support" of the American people and pledged "full support" for rescue and humanitarian assistance.

Already 10,000 U.S. military personal have arrived or are on their way to distribute food and water, and are providing security for the relief effort. The United States Army is controlling the airport and the Washington Post reports U.S. military officials are working to open up the ports in Haiti to bring funnel in more food and badly needed gasoline.

Haiti native and musician Wyclef Jean who has done relief work in Haiti for years urged people to use their cell phones to donate to the cause. His organization Yele has already raised millions of dollars and he will host, along with George Clooney and Anderson Cooper, a commercial free global telethon on Friday January 22 to continue to raise money and awarness.

First Lady, Michelle Obama also encouraged people to donate, you can see how to donate here.

Man-made problems combined with natural disasters

	Haiti is a very poor country ill-equipped to deal with a natural disaster of this scale.

The nation of Haiti was created in 1804, after the world's first successful black slave rebellion led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines against France.

Civil war ensued and infighting and power struggles sent the country into a paralyzing disorder.

Despite Haitian resentments, U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. In 1937, some 18,000 Haitians were massacred along the Dominican border on the orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

In 1957, Francois ''Papa Doc'' Duvalier took power by force and ruled by brutally killing all opposition.  Tens of thousands were tortured and killed under Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude ''Baby Doc'' Duvalier.

In 1990, Haitians elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a slum priest in a land slide victory. But a military dictatorship overthrew Aristide 1991, sending thousands of Haitians to the seas in unsafe boats, desperate to get to Florida.

President Bill Clinton sent troops to Haiti in 1994 to restore Aristide, who was re-elected in 2000.

But his second term was weakened by accusations of corruption, and in 2004, after a military coup, a U.S. Marines airplane flew him to the Central African Republic.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Boniface Alexandre, took control until elections in 2006, when the current president, René Préval, was elected.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Americas.

History of earthquakes

	Click here for a more detailed map of Haiti.

The quake measured 7.0-magnitude on the Richter scale, which means it is considered a "major" quake that can cause serious damage over larger areas. Haiti has had earthquakes before and sits on a large geological fault, but this one was described as one of the most powerful to hit the region.

Although the islands in the Caribbean are not considered one of the planet's most active earthquake zones, there is a history of large, devastating earthquakes.

Most of Haiti lies on the Gonave microplate, a sliver of the earth’s crust between the much larger North American plate to the north and the Caribbean plate to the south.

Part of the southern fault zone broke and slid to cause the quake, according to Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, who described the event to the New York Times.

He said the fault is similar in structure to the San Andreas fault in California.

Such "strike-slip" events are shallow, but produce violent shaking at the surface and can be "very devastating, especially when there are cities nearby,” Dr. Mann told the Times.