A five-story U.N. headquarters building was also brought down by Tuesday's 7.0 magnitude quake, the most powerful to hit Haiti in more than 200 years according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake's epicenter was only 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. About 4 million people live in the city and surrounding area. Aftershocks as powerful as 5.9 rattled the city throughout the night and into Wednesday.
The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is ill-equipped to respond to such a disaster, lacking heavy equipment to move debris and sufficient emergency personnel.
"If a building like the palace, which is very solid, collapsed, then the devastation is going to be worse because a lot of the buildings are not up to code around Port-au-Prince," he told ABC's Good Morning America. "They're flimsy little abodes hanging on the sides of hills."
Experts said the quake's epicenter was very shallow at a depth of only 6.2
miles, which was likely to have magnified the destruction.
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