It was still hot but the sun was slowly dipping into the Caribbean, casting shadows over Port-au-Prince. The narrow streets, clogged at the best of times, were filled with office workers and schoolchildren weaving through traffic. It was peak time for the tap-taps, buses painted with bright colours and religious messages.
Haiti's capital is a study in extremes – hillside slums of squalor overlook fancy hotels and United Nations compounds – but with the working day all but done most inhabitants shared the same thought: head home.
Just another humid, busy afternoon, the aroma of fried plantain from street stalls mixing with diesel fumes and the babble of more than 3 million voices. At 4.53pm, everything changed.
"The entire mountain seemed to fall down all around me," said Emmet ¬Murphy, a US charity worker who was driving out of the city. "People were panicking, buildings collapsed on the roadside and a huge dust plume raised from the valley floor."
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake, the most powerful to strike Port-au-Prince in two centuries, shook the earth for about a minute, but even before it finished thousands of buildings had collapsed. Devastation so instant, so thorough, that survivors struggled for words.
"Downtown Port-au-Prince is lost, dust and rumbles," said Frederic Dupoux, a Twitter user. "Every other house is on the ground. People are terrified and have no hope. Natural holocaust. Dead bodies are everywhere."
People screamed "Jesus! Jesus!" as offices, hotels, houses and shops ¬collapsed. The poor, as ever with natural disasters, were the worst hit, especially Belair and the area known as Carrefour, near the sea. "The slums on the hills have completely collapsed. We have heard of landslides, with entire communities being wiped out," said Sophie Perez, country director for Care International. "We're particularly worried about the children, because so many schools seem to have collapsed. It's horrifying."
Soil, dust and smoke smothered the city for about 12 minutes, according to witnesses. When it partly cleared the scene was apocalyptic. Neighbourhoods levelled, shopping centres reduced to rubble, ravines filled with corpses and debris. People streaked white with dust and red with blood wept and staggered, dazed amid an alien landscape.
It quickly became clear that wealth, prestige and supposedly sturdy buildings were no guarantee of salvation. The dome on what had been a gleaming white presidential palace collapsed on top of flattened walls. President René Préval and his wife were not inside, and escaped, but the president described stepping over dead bodies and hearing the cries of those trapped inside the collapsed parliament. The senate president was among those pinned under the ruins.
Another apparent casualty was Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, whose body was reportedly found in the wreckage of the archdiocese office. Taiwan's embassy was destroyed and Spain's badly damaged.
The UN headquarters, based in the former Christopher hotel, was also destroyed, with an estimated 150 people inside. Around 10 people, "some dead, some alive", were pulled from the rubble, said Alain Le Roy, the head of UN peacekeeping.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the missing included Hedi Annabi, the Tunisian chief of the UN stabilisation mission in Haiti. The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, told RTL radio: "It would appear that everyone who was in the building, including my friend Hedi Annabi, are dead."
The 9,000-strong peacekeeping force, which is spread across Haiti, had to deal with its own tragedies before responding to others'. At least 23 Filipino peacekeepers, mostly clerks who tend to be the last to leave the headquarters, were feared dead. At least 11 Brazilian soldiers also died and scores were reported missing. Chinese state media said eight Chinese peacekeepers died and 10 were missing.
The Hotel Montana collapsed but the famed Olafson hotel, which partly inspired Graham Greene's novel The Comedians, was damaged.
As night descended, with electricity cut, Port-au-Prince disappeared into an inky blackness punctured by car headlights and the flicker of fires. Ian Rogers of Save the Children said he could hear cries of anguish and mourning.
A worldwide effort to race aid to Haiti was about to swing into action, and within hours Barack Obama and Pope Benedict would be among foreign leaders expressing solidarity, but for many in the devastated city there was no immediate relief. Voices cried out from the rubble.
"Please take me out, I am dying. I have two children with me," a female voice pleaded with a Reuters journalist from under a collapsed kindergarten in the Canape-Vert district.
Police and rescue vehicles were absent from many areas. "People are trying to dig victims out with flashlights," said Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity.
Aftershocks rocked those buildings that still stood, causing fresh panic, but dwindled in power as the night wore on.
Phone lines were in tatters but some managed to send tweets. From Karen Ashmore: "Needs to be rescued. Please go help. Trapped in her collapsed house: Jillian Thorpe, Rue Charles Perrault 36, Morne Hercule, Petionville." The British aid worker was later found alive.
Those who could not save the living started taking dead from rubble, a foot here, a hand there, and lined the bodies side by side under a sheet. Survivors peeked under the covers to see if they were friends and relatives.
"The whole city is in darkness. You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go. The traffic is jammed," one eyewitness, Michael Bazile, told CNN. "Everybody is yelling. They are praying. They are crying." As dawn broke people wandered the streets holding hands. Helicopters whirred overhead – the first sign of aid. Thousands crammed into hospitals with fractures and burn injuries.
A Red Cross spokesman said the organisation was overwhelmed. "There are too many people who need help. We lack equipment, we lack bodybags."
President Préval emerged looking shaken: "It is a catastrophe," he said. It was still too soon to count the dead but the prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, suggested more than 100,000.
As the sun set over the ruins of Port-au-Prince the voices from the rubble were fewer and fainter. Other voices, of survivors too weak or exhausted to dig, wafted from public squares. They were singing hymns.
5:05 PM
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