At 16:53 on January 12 2010, the Caribbean nation of Haiti was struck by an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. In a country routinely referred to as the poorest in the western hemisphere, the devastation has been dramatic and widespread. 3 weeks after the catastrophic earthquake, Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive stated that 200,000 people had been identified as dead and estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed.The night after the earthquake, Haitians who had lost their homes, or who feared that their houses might collapse, slept outdoors, in the streets and parks of Port-au-Prince. Thousands of people lay under the sky, and many of them sang hymns: “God, you are the one who gave me life. Why are we suffering?”
