An RCMP officer from Ottawa is one of two Canadian police officers still missing after a massive earthquake in Haiti.

As of Wednesday at 2 p.m., Supt. Doug Coates of RCMP headquarters and Sgt. Mark Gallagher from Nova Scotia had not been located, RCMP Sgt. Sylvie Tremblay confirmed.

Coates had been acting commissioner of the United Nations stabilization mission in Haiti, while Gallagher was training and mentoring officers with the Haiti national police.

Tuesday's earthquake may have killed thousands of people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital and largest city. The earthquake damaged and destroyed thousands of homes, heavily damaged the water system and knocked out electricity.

Many Ottawa Haitians have been gathering at the Royal Beauty Salon, watching for news about their relatives on the 24-hour news channel. (CBC)

Ottawa police Sgt. Nuria Delasantos said Wednesday that all three Ottawa Police Service officers serving with the Canadian peacekeeping force in Haiti were able to send emails to their families confirming their safety.

But many other Ottawa-Gatineau residents were still trying to learn if their colleagues or loved ones in Haiti survived.

Leslie Bien-Aimé, who left Haiti for Canada 21 years ago, is worried about his 20 nieces and nephews, as well as his father in Port-au-Prince.

"There is no way I can find him and I don't know what to do," Bien-Aimé said Wednesday, adding that he didn't sleep Tuesday night.

'I don't know what to do'

Local Haitians have been gathering at the barbershop that Bien-Aimé owns, the Royal Beauty Salon on McArthur Road.

All Tuesday evening, anxious relatives of Port-au-Prince residents sat in the barber chairs looking up at the TV hanging from the ceiling, hoping for more details. The phone in the shop rang all evening as other Haitian-Canadians called in trying to see if anyone had heard anything.

"I have my mother, my sister — everybody's over there," said an Ottawa resident who called himself Jean-Baptiste. "Just if we can get even one image to know what's going on — we tried to call on the card phone, cellphone. Nothing works."

Jean-Pierre Taschereau, senior manager for the Canadian Red Cross, said a colleague in Haiti reported that the infrastructure in Port-au-Prince was badly damaged.

"The power grid is down, communications are very difficult, many roads have collapsed," he said Wednesday while preparing to leave Ottawa for Haiti a few hours later. "The drinking water system has been destroyed as well, so we're looking at a very difficult challenging operation in a heavily populated urban area."

Taschereau will be leading an International Red Cross team in the devastated area.

Ottawa Police Const. Linda Monette, who recently returned from a mission with the UN security force in Haiti, said conditions were so poor when she was there that she can't even imagine what they are like now.

She recalled the concrete rubble everywhere, the filth and stench, the huge potholes in the roads and the sadness in the eyes of the children who ran around barefoot, trying to sell anything they had in order to afford food.

"You always thought that you were in the middle of a war zone," she said.

Ottawa Const. Linda Monette, who recently returned from a mission with the UN in Haiti, says the country looked like a war zone even before the earthquake. (Courtesy of Linda Monette)