Haiti, Chile, Hawaii: When life hits, it hits hard.

(CNN) -- A major earthquake struck southern Haiti on Tuesday, knocking down buildings and power lines and inflicting what its ambassador to the United States called a catastrophe for the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

Several eyewitnesses reported heavy damage and bodies in the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where concrete-block homes line steep hillsides. There was no estimate of the dead and wounded Tuesday evening






CONCEPCION, Chile - One of the most powerful earthquakes in decades battered Chile on Saturday, killing more than 200 people, knocking down buildings and triggering a tsunami that rolled menacingly across the Pacific.

Buildings caught fire, major highway bridges collapsed and debris lay in the streets across large swaths of central Chile affecting about two million people.

A 15-storey building collapsed in Concepcion, the closest major city to the epicentre, and overturned cars lay scattered below a fallen overpass in the capital Santiago. Telephone and power lines went down, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage and loss of life.






After a day of several tide fluctuations along the Hawaii coast, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted a warning triggered by a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile Saturday morning.

While evacuations were ordered and roads into tourist-heavy Waikiki closed off, officials said the state escaped unscathed, with initial waves looking more like an extreme fluctuation in the tide than a giant tsunami. A tsunami warning was canceled for Hawaii by 2 p.m.

An official from the center gave an optimistic view about the tsunami while it was causing dramatic tide fluctuations in the Aloha State.