earthquakes occur where essentially the large plates underneath the earth's surface rub up against each other and relieve stress. that was the case, of course, in haiti in which this earthquake was the biggest that haiti has had in over 230 years, and what caused it was something called a strike slip type of fault, and what geologists are saying today is that it's very similar actually to the same type of fault line as the san andreas fault in california. a number of officials told nbc's tom costello earlier today if there was an earthquake along the san andreas fault similar to what haiti witnessed in port-au-prince, there would also be extensive damage in the united states. again, it's a geological phenomenon that happens all the time, but as of now, the year 2010, geologists still don't have a great way of predicting exactly when and where earthquakes are going to happen. it has been a remarkable 30 hours in port-au-prince in haiti since the earthquake struck at approximately 5:00 p.m. eastern time on wednesday. the latest numbers suggest that at least, according to officials, hundreds of thousands killed. some officials now suggesting it could be as high as half a million. the red cross is saying that 3 million residents in haiti were affected in one way or another by the earthquake. and, again, relief supplies, well, they are starting to arrive at the airport. there is a devastating challenge that is facing the country as far as getting those supplies actually in to port-au-prince. stay with msnbc on cable and on the internet for complete coverage of the aftermath of the earthquake in haiti. i'm david shuster. up next "countdown with keith olbermann." this was where lived the most powerless of the poor, and this where lived the most powerful of the nation. and this, this could be almost anyother street in almost any other part of their island country. >> too many people are dying. >> and this, all this, could be the greatest natural disaster and the greatest humanitarian crisis since the indian ocean tsunami. the death toll could be 5,000 or 50,000 or 500,000. this is "countdown's" special coverage of the earthquake in haiti. bodies piled on the sides of roads like cord wood, schools, hospitals, prisons, now piles of rubble. the president of that country, homeless. the president of this country, trying to help. >> the people of haiti will have the full support of the united states in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble and to deliver the humanitarian relief. >> and for this, he is criticized on public airwaves today by a deranged racist. >> this will play right into obama's hands, humanitarian, compassionate, they'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community. >> and a senile money-scamming fraud says this happened because haitians made a deal with the devil. plus, the waning days for health care reform here. the house fights back. the excise tax may be eliminated or reduced. but the insurance cartel may have been illegally funneling millions into anti-reform ad campaigns. congressman anthony weiner joins us. as we are reminded of what health care reform really means by an awful message of nightmarish reality from a place, a place this time not so very far away. all the news and commentary now on "countdown." good evening from new york. there are words, three of them, that are enough to stop conversation up and down the san andreas fault that threatens northern and southern california like a sleeping snake. three words that have now been pronounced by seismologists near another almost living thing, deep below the earth's surface, the enriquillo plantain garden fault. the three words are the big one. the island nation of haiti has suffered its big one, and the results are enough to melt the strongest heart and shatter the most impenetrable soul. the haitian prime minister predicting today that hundreds of thousands may have died. certainly 3.5 million have been impacted. haitians piling the bodies of the victims along the devastated streets of the country's capital city today. streets covered in dust and in blood. the bodies of small children lying next to schools, men and women covered in plastic tarps or sheets, resting where hospitals once stood. no firm count of how many dead, but officials fearing that number could, indeed, reach half a million. as we mentioned the prime minister saying today several hundred thousand people might have been killed in the powerful earthquake. it's all guessing now. a leading senator in haiti predicting 500,000 could be dead, acknowledging that no one really knows. those who survive out in the streets, very little left standing. the presidential palace, or more correctly, what's left of it, seen here, now flattened, nearly. the cathedral reduced to rubble. hospitals, schools, the main prison, entire neighborhoods, all gone. the president of the haiti telling "the miami herald," quoting him, parliament has collapsed, the tax office has collapsed, schools have collapsed, hospitals have collapsed. there are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them. in that collapsed cathedral, the roman catholic archbishop of port-au-prince among the dead. the united nations saying this afternoon that 14 of its personnel have been killed. 150 still missing including the u.n. mission chief there. 2 million people were within ten miles of the epicentre and more than 30 strong aftershocks followed. seismologists describing what was, in many ways, a perfect storm. first, a huge earthquake, as we mentioned, measuring 7.0 on the richter scale. second, the quake was shallow, just six miles down, increases the intensity and localizes it to the region right along the fault line. and third occurring beneath a densely populated area with few and meager building codes. all of it adding up to massive, almost panoramic destruction. roger musan of the british geological survey telling time magazine, this was the big one. the fault has been more or less locked for 200 years. seismologists were unsure as to whether it would produce one big one or several smaller ones. we seem to have the answer. secretary of state clinton having canceled the remainder of her trip to the pacific in order to return to washington tonight. defense secretary gates canceling his own trip to stay stateside during the emergency. the president today promising a swift, coordinated, and aggressive response to a nation that was already besieged, that was already the poorest in the western hemisphere. >> we are just now beginning to learn the extent of the devastation, but the reports and images that we've seen of collapsed hospitals, crumbled homes and men and women carrying their injured neighbors through the streets are truly heart wrenching. indeed, for a country and a people who are no strangers to hardship and suffering, this tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible. we will be resolute in our response, and i pledge to the people of haiti that you will have a friend and partner in the united states of america today and going forward. >> we're joined now live from the port-au-prince airport by brian williams, the anchor and the itting manager ever the nbc news and an curry and al roker and kerry sanders. our great thanks to all of you behind the scenes who have made this possible. brian, let me start with you. give me the overview of what you have seen in your hours in haiti so far. >> well, keith, i'm standing here thinking that we're standing in some of the only lights in haiti, and behind us, the only remaining lights. a lot of them are temporary. a lot of them belong to aircraft. the news we can pass along at this hour is, u.s. air force special forces just stopped by here and said they are setting up the first control tower we've had since the quake. it's really going to be in the cockpit of a c-130, but now there's going to be air traffic control, and that is absolutely critical. as of right now, it's just planes trying to talk to one another with basic emergency lighting on this runway. it's completely haphazard. and the flights are starting to come in now. we saw a finland air charter flight, the canadian military is here, the u.s. is here, medical relief flights, dropping off supplies on the tarmac. not all of them getting picked up. more on it a in a moment, but you mentioned our on-air team, kerry sanders, ann curry, al roker. kerry sanders, you and i were talking earlier. you estimate that over the course of your career, covering haiti, you probably lived here on and off for a year of your life. set the scene in what can be a desperate nation before this tragedy. >> this is a miserable country for so many who live here, and now so much worse. you were talking about the chaos on the ground and in the air. let me just give you a little peek at that chaos. we were airborne today, flying over the city in a helicopter, trying to assess the damage from the air. and as we were taking a right turn, a left-turn helicopter came right at us. we went down, it went up. there is no air traffic control, but for what is now being set up. no need to have more problems in this country than they already have. let me tell you what the picture of the country looks like as i flew over. port-au-prince, that large city, so compact with so many shanty towns and so many shacks built on the sides of hills, on the sides of mountains that have collapsed, slid away, are crushed, pancaked. it's not the entire city, but it's spot after spot after spot. and those buildings that are still standing are empty. nobody wants to be inside a building because of the aftershocks that you mentioned. we've had some aftershocks here while i was out today. one rather dramatic. people started running, screaming, no destination, just scared. some of the concrete began to fall on the building that we were standing at that had already collapsed. around the corner, another building where they believe there may be survivors and people may still be trapped inside. efforts to get them stopped as everybody pulled back. now, they may have resumed, but you've got the darkness. there are so many problems here, brian, at just trying to save the lives. bart green is one of the doct s doctors, a trauma doctor from miami. he flew in here. i said, people are crushed under this concrete, if they are alive, can they survive? he was emphatic, yes, we can get them out. we have 48 hours or so. we are going to work to get those people out. but the scene of a country that is a miserable country on a good day is sad. it's almost pathetic. >> reporter: and ann, one of the places the survivors are coming is here. if you live in haiti, if you're anywhere near the grounds of this airport, you're thinking, maybe there's a way out, maybe there's people coming in who have things you need. >> in fact, because they need so much, brian, you're absolutely right. and you know, they're coming to these gates, they're crowding these gates. it's absolute chaos just outside the gates as people have been trying to find a way out of here. and they're coming to these gates covered in dust, coming to these gates with open wounds. some of them have had a little bit of medical care, but you can see that the need is so great. and you know out on the streets right now, some of the buildings that you just heard were crushed and have pancaked include hospitals. so many hospitals are down that they actually have on the streets, triage clinics out on the streets with bodies lying on the streets covered in streets. it can be said, i believe, that in recent memory, there has not been a humanitarian disaster that has required, that has needed, that is now pleading for needed, that is now pleading for outside help, for international help more than this one. and i think that help cannot arrive fast enough for these people. and i think that the control tower that you talked about that's being set up by the air force here on the ground is going to be critical for bringing in help, the supplies, they'll be so critical in keeping people alive. >> and al, among the rescuers tonight, fairfax county, virginia, which beat a lot of countries here. >> absolutely. we spoke them this morning on "wake up with al" on the weather channel, and they were loading their trucks heading to dulles airport. and in fact, they are here. they're in the terminal building here, which has emergency lighting. there's standing water, massive cracks throughout the walls. in fact, we were sitting underneath an overhang, and a gentleman came over. he didn't speak english, but gestured to the overhang saying it could come down so we moved away, because we were standing on the tarmac when an aftershock happened. it was much like a large truck rumbled by, but there was no truck. it was just an aftershock. and as you've noticed, brian, there's a lot of humanitarian aid that's on the tarmac still, just hasn't been picked up. it's waiting for delivery and distribution within the city. >> reporter: keith, for the longest time, a stand-up fetal monitor was here near our live location until someone gingerly walked it over to the side, but that kind of thing is happening. i can't emphasize how early it is in all of this. and yet, not far from here, the tragedy unfolds. >> brian, i've been struck in your early reporting from there and along with ann's by one point in particular, which i would like you to expand upon. i don't want to create a problem out of nowhere, but there's something salient in here, potentially disturbing, the crowds at the primters of the airport. is desperation beginning to be a factor here with the destruction of the response, the ordinary triage sense of response to something like this. if shelter and rescue and exit is not forthcoming quickly, could we see the prospect of the healthy survivors essentially trying to force their way, understandably, into some kind of relief, some place of relief? >> oh. we've seen civil unrest and the loss of control by what passes for everyday government here. many times over the last few decades, it's usually when the news media come to haiti, and the public attention gets focused on it again, and then we go off to other things. this is one of those times. this nation, every day, is this far from spiraling out of control. you take people who have next to nothing and then reduce that to nothing and see what happens. >> i think that's absolutely true. i think that there is a real risk here. i think that there is an expectation that that could happen, keith. i think it's a very good question. and i know you don't want to create trouble by asking that question, but i think it's a fair question. and i think the best person to answer that question is actually you, dear. because you understand. you've covered some of these periods of unrest. how long do you think people are going to be willing to wait without food, without shelter, enduring these aftershocks? >> i hate to sound so pessimistic, because they have done without for so long, they're almost used to this, but not at this level. i think the real question is, and it may have something to do with a woman that i spoke to here who is from upstate new york. and that is her sense of anarchy beginning to set in. people who are camped out tonight fear for their own safety. if they have a place to sleep and one belonging with them, it may turn out that somebody else wants that belonging from them. because people are desperate. and they need water. i mean, these are very basic things that people need. if you have a bottle of water and somebody wants it, it's very possible somebody's going to take it with force. and that's, i think, the real problem. look, there can be an incredible airlift here, and there will be. getting it out will be the difficult thing. fortunately, when i flew over, a lot of roads are still passable. so they will be able to get it. but this country doesn't have a whole lot of structure for trucks. there's not a lot of trucks here. organizing the trucks here, getting that airlift in of the vehicles to get out, it's going to take some time. if the marines bring in an expeditionary force as they are talking about doing, they will have to land and bring trucks in. it's one thing to stack it all up here, getting it out into the people in this city. if they live up in the hills, sure, they could walk all the way down here to this airport, but they're not going to. it would not be a good distribution point. it's going to be difficult. it's going to be very -- it's going to take days, if not weeks, to get this stuff in place, and that's where the real problem begins. >> so keith, it's a grim picture. >> kerry sanders, i have one question for you based on what you saw. you've heard these wild estimates ranging from, at the very low end, a few thousand fatalities to this extraordinary estimate by a senator in haiti of perhaps 500,000. is the latter, the horrible upside figure, is that implausible based on what you saw, or is there no way even to estimate based on your aerial tour of port-au-prince? >> i think it's too early to say. it may turn out to be true, it may be a wild number. this is a country that would like to tell you how many people live here, but they don't even have a census to tell you how many people live here. trying to find out how many people died here, it probably will never fully happen. just getting the rubble removed from where people were crushed could take an extremely long time. this is a country where when something falls and breaks, it's just maybe just left there. and so people who died in this earthquake, they may be in their graves now. >> brian, sum this up for me. we have spoken under the saddest of circumstances with you in banda aceh and you in new orleans and everywhere else. is there any way yet to assess, overall where that fits in the horrible kaleidoscope of our recent history? >> no, not yet, and i was just discussing banda aceh this evening with a producer for routers television who was also there, but you get that feeling. he just took a brief trip into the center of port-au-prince, and it's stomach-turning. you can't -- i've always said, you have to kind of put it off in a box, because it doesn't have any bearing on the life we fly back into and maintain day to day in the united states. this is something you see in places like this after horrible natural disasters like this. >> no better word describes it than that -- horrible. brian williams, ann curry, al roker, kerry sanders, terrific reporting under dire circumstances. we appreciate the time greatly, and our best wishes to you and the entire crew there. >> thanks, keith. >> incredibly today, one senile televangelist ripoff artist decided to make this about the devil and a racist and drug addled purveyor of hate tried to make this about domestic politics and portray it as black people trying to impress other black people. a quick comment on pat robertson and rush limbaugh and then back to haiti. her ride. (announcer) gillette fusion. fresh blade. more comfortable shave. nows just how much gillette fusion. fresh blade. water vegetables need. so, to turn those vegetables into campbell's condensed soup, we don't boil it down, our chefs just add less water from the start. ♪ so many, many reasons ♪ it's so m'm! m'm! good! ♪ this is the second night after a 7.0 earthquake centered athaiti, essentially in the words of the president of the nation, collapsed his country. we're going to go back to port-au-prince, the airport there, where a reporter from reuter news service, ben gruber, has been kind enough to join us. earlier today, mr. gruber was on a motorcycle tour of the city and joins us now. i want to start by asking you to give us your overall impressions of what you saw of the city today. >> good morning, keith, or good night. it's been a pretty