Scenes of Destruction in Haiti, From Above

Images of this week’s massive earthquake in Haiti are now flowing out of the country as aid workers and journalists flow in. What we have seen so far confirms the obvious: devastation is massive and widespread. Buildings collapsed. Homes destroyed. A country once inching back from the abyss has been thrown violently back.

The photos above, courtesy of GeoEye and Google, show parts of Port-au-Prince before and after the quake. The white building in the bottom frame is the presidential palace, cracked along its axis.

This morning, Google added GeoEye’s new imagery to Google Earth. It is available here. We’ve embedded it below. Google Earth Library also has a good collection of data and images from Haiti.

Additionally, Google has launched a dynamic spreadsheet, called the “Haiti Situation Tracking Form” that allows people to post messages looking for loved ones and other updates.

[kml]: http://mw1.google.com/mw-earth-vectordb/haiti/Haiti-Earthquake-nl.kml

A Google product manager, Dylan Lorimer, said in a phone interview this afternoon that the search company is working to distribute a portable version of Google Earth to aid workers in or on their way to Haiti, in hope that the latest geospatial data will help with the recovery effort. The product, usually sold as Google Earth Enterprise, allows users to view the Google Earth globe without an Internet connection.

Above: the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, as seen after Tuesday’s 7.0 earthquake. Source: UNDP