On January 13 an earthquake rated 7 on the Richter scale hit Haiti and caused total devastation.

Eighty per cent of the country live below the poverty line, it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

Approximately 100,000 people have been killed in the earthquake.

The epicentre of this disaster is Port au Prince, it was the worst part hit in the whole of the earthquake.

The people of Port au Prince worked desperately through the night to save as many people buried under the rubble as they could.

A group of men worked into the night with only a crowbar and the light of a video camera to free a woman who was buried in the rubble of her office building.

Barack Obama spoke to the Haitian people and vowed to them that he would give the country $100,000,000 to help with the damage.

The Haitian people are desperately digging people from the ruins of schools and buildings in the hope that some people are still alive, but the president says "There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them. All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe."

By Pierce Chalmers, age 12, from Eltham