Haiti earthquake - hundreds of thousands feared dead

A major international relief effort was launched yesterday to hurry rescuers and suppliers to the Caribbean country as the streets of Port-au-Prince were left strewn with corpses and shattered buildings.

Little escaped the devastation wrought by the grade 7.0-magnitude quake that struck the area in the south of Haiti on Tuesday afternoon.


Hospitals and schools collapsed and were reportedly full of dead while 200 foreigners were missing from the city's expensive Hotel Montana.

Up to 200 United Nations staff in the city were unaccounted for last night including the civilian head of mission, Hedi Annabi of Tunisia, after its headquarters was flattened.

Monsignor Serge Miot, the city's Catholic archbishop, was a confirmed casualty, his body pulled from the rubble of his offices while his vicar general, Charles Benoit, was missing.

The presidential palace, Haiti's grandest building, was substantially destroyed and its incumbent, Rene Preval, described the scene in his capital as "unimaginable".

He said he had been stepping over the bodies of the dead and hearing the cries of the trapped underneath his country's collapsed parliament building.

His prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, said the government believed the death toll in the city of two million people was "well over 100,000" while Youri Latortue, a senior senator, said it could be 500,000.

Both admitted they had no way of knowing but aid workers on the scene reported widespread destruction and suffering as severely injured people lay in the streets, unable to get medical assistance.

Haiti, the poorest country by far in the western hemisphere, was already struggling to recover from a series of severe hurricanes and flooding in 2008.

The country sits on a major fault line and scientists have warned for years that it was likely to be hit by a major earthquake.

This now looks a lot worse than I first thought when I saw the early reports. Mother earth is not happy, is she?

So sad. Oxfam is asking for donations to provide support.

https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/haiti-earthquake/index.php?urn=34915807&p=2010SAB001&ito=3488&itc=0

TheCat wrote:

This now looks a lot worse than I first thought when I saw the early reports. Mother earth is not happy, is she?

It's not Mother Earth's doings... this is what happens when you make a pact with the devil!

http://www.huliq.com/3257/90436/pat-robertson-haiti-earthquake-caused-pact-devil

Crick wrote:

TheCat wrote:

This now looks a lot worse than I first thought when I saw the early reports. Mother earth is not happy, is she?

It's not Mother Earth's doings... this is what happens when you make a pact with the devil!

http://www.huliq.com/3257/90436/pat-robertson-haiti-earthquake-caused-pact-devil

Now theres a man who needs a check up from the neck up!

They're now saying the death toll could reach 500,000

I've been watching news coverage of this all weekend, and it really bothers me that all the aid is sitting at the airport but is not being distributed. I can almost understand why it's not being delivered, because all the footage I see of passing out food looks like a scene in a park when you throw bread crumbs to pigeons! I wouldn't want the aid grabbed up and sold on the black market by the young criminals who don't care about all the suffering and dying people. I understand the desperation of the people, but they have to realize that if they don't "police" their people, they are never going to get the help they need... aid workers do not want to put themselves in a dangerous situation.

If it were up to me, I would just load the supplies into helicopters and drop the food from above. This might force the Haitians to create some order amongst themselves and distribute the supplies where they are needed... I think they will flock to the distribution site like a flock of hungry pigeons no matter how ordered the UN workers try to keep the situation, so they should just drop it in like they are feeding pigeons. I am not able to put myself in their shoes, so I have no idea what the Haitian people are thinking... I can only imagine what I would do if I was in that situation, and it wouldn't be stomping on biscuits that don't taste good or pushing and shoving women and children out of my way so I can grab food out of the hands of others.

I hope I don't sound too negative or uncaring, I really do feel bad for the people... I just hate to see the selfishness instead of people pulling together as a community. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Haitians, but I have no patience for the behaviors I have seen.

Crick wrote:

I've been watching news coverage of this all weekend, and it really bothers me that all the aid is sitting at the airport but is not being distributed. I can almost understand why it's not being delivered, because all the footage I see of passing out food looks like a scene in a park when you throw bread crumbs to pigeons! I wouldn't want the aid grabbed up and sold on the black market by the young criminals who don't care about all the suffering and dying people. I understand the desperation of the people, but they have to realize that if they don't "police" their people, they are never going to get the help they need... aid workers do not want to put themselves in a dangerous situation.

If it were up to me, I would just load the supplies into helicopters and drop the food from above. This might force the Haitians to create some order amongst themselves and distribute the supplies where they are needed... I think they will flock to the distribution site like a flock of hungry pigeons no matter how ordered the UN workers try to keep the situation, so they should just drop it in like they are feeding pigeons. I am not able to put myself in their shoes, so I have no idea what the Haitian people are thinking... I can only imagine what I would do if I was in that situation, and it wouldn't be stomping on biscuits that don't taste good or pushing and shoving women and children out of my way so I can grab food out of the hands of others.

I hope I don't sound too negative or uncaring, I really do feel bad for the people... I just hate to see the selfishness instead of people pulling together as a community. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Haitians, but I have no patience for the behaviors I have seen.

Hiya Crick!

I don't see their behaviour as selfish, I see it as very deperate people trying to survive. Haiti is a third world country and life is difficult there at the very best of times. It's not surprising that they are so desperate that any aspect of "community" goes out of the window. It's likely that community doesn;t figure strongly in their general day to day life. I just hope that aid can be sorted out soon for them, though how such an impoverished society will cope in the long run, remains to be seen.

If the aid distributors made it clear that there would be some supplies for everyone it might make the people a little calmer and reassure them.