The Philippine Online Chronicles

An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 struck Haiti Tuesday afternoon, damaging the presidential palace along with other government and public buildings.

According to the US Geological Survey, the epicenter was just 15 km southwest of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince. Experts said that what might have magnified the destruction was the shallow depth of the epicenter, which was only 6.2 miles.

The recent earthquake that hit the Caribbean nation reportedly sent people screaming into the streets as buildings started to collapse left and right. Fritz Lonchamps, the secretary general of the presidency, said that the earthquake "is a catastrophe of major proportion" as it caused major loss of life and properties. Operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity Rachmani Domersant told Reuters, "I think hundreds of casualties would be a serious understatement." Haiti, which is situated west of the Dominican Republic and occupies one-third of the island of Hispaniola, has a capital with a high population density. Port-au-Prince has about 2 million people and is also “an area that is is particularly vulnerable in terms of construction practice... There could be a high number of casualties,” seismologist David Wald told NYTimes.

Six aftershocks followed the quake, the two worst measuring 5.2 and 5.9 on the Richter scale.

Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, also felt the quake, 160 miles from the epicenter. Yahoo! News reported that Southeastern and Eastern Cuba also felt the effects of the quake, although there was no damage reported. The last major quake that hit the island was in 1770.

In another earthquake news, a 5.0-magnitude quake hit Manila as well as surrounding cities Tuesday night.