Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby dbcooper41 » Wed Jan 13, 2010 4:23 pm

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.js ... nk_thorp_1

thorp was apparently the official liar in the jessica lynch story. so there is a family tradition for "stretching the truth".
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Wed Jan 13, 2010 5:14 pm

dbcooper41 wrote:http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_thorp_1

thorp was apparently the official liar in the jessica lynch story. so there is a family tradition for "stretching the truth".


Though this is an interesting side story, this thread is about the on going disaster in Haiti. If you want to pursue this story, please start your own thread. With 100,000 people dead and millions needing assistance, I'd like to keep this thread focused on the disaster.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby dbcooper41 » Wed Jan 13, 2010 5:29 pm

DoYouEverWonder


Quote:
Haiti is reeling from a massive earthquake, and U.S. and international agencies are scrambling to respond.

In a statement, Randy Martin, director of global emergency operations for the relief group Mercy Corps said, “Initial reports indicate that the quake has caused extensive damage, and we fear that casualties could be widespread.”

A few hours ago, I received this tweet from my friends Kira Kay and Jason Maloney of the Bureau for International Reporting, currently in Haiti to shoot a documentary. “Planning to head out at first light to Port au Prince,” they write. “Don’t know if we will have communications. Will post when we can #fb.” I’ll be following their tweets and Facebook posts all day.

The Coast Guard has mobilized cutters and aircraft: The service deployed the crews of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane; the Valiant, a Reliance-class cutter; and the medium-endurance cutters Forward, Tahoma and Mohawk. According to a Coast Guard statement, additional Coast Guard assets in the region are also standing by to render assistance if needed.

The U.S. military has a long history of involvement in Haiti, including major interventions like Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994 and 1995. More recently, Haiti has been a destination for military-led humanitarian assistance missions like Continuing Promise 2009, pictured here. The Associated Press, quoting White House sources, says that less than 20 U.S. military personnel are currently in the country, and they are prepared to take part in humanitarian operations.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01 ... aid-haiti/




Where were these guys after Katrina hit?


they were in new orleans.

http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/pakistan/10843



Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps Nancy Lindborg, president of Mercy Corps, takes a deep breath when she thinks about 2005. So far, to understate things just a little, it’s been a highly unusual year.

“You never want to say never,” Lindborg says. “But it does seem like we’re hitting on all cylinders right now in a way we rarely have. The tsunami set the stage for some all-hands-on-deck responses, and there’s really been no letup since.”

Indeed, the Indian Ocean tsunami, 2004’s calamitous closing act, prompted one of Mercy Corps’ most extensive emergency efforts ever. Then, an unfolding food crisis in Niger and boiling-point civil strife in Uganda created a two-headed emergency on either side of Africa. When Hurricane Katrina shattered the Gulf Coast, Mercy Corps embarked on its first-ever full-scale relief effort within the United States. The agency’s Guatemala staff leads international efforts to help areas devastated by floods and mudslides after Tropical Storm Stan swept through Central America. At almost the same time, the 7.6-magnitude earthquake in northern Pakistan monopolized international headlines.

As efforts to save quake survivors entered a second week, Mercy Corps doctors, sanitation specialists and relief organizers ventured into remote mountain valleys in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Meanwhile, Mercy Corps’ far-flung staff - from Portland to Scotland to Hong Kong - scrambled to keep a perpetual motion machine running: logistics, funding, planning, supplies, human resources, security, communications, media relations.

Most of the time, Mercy Corps programs take a practical, low-key, long-term approach to aid: repairing canals in ex-Soviet Georgia; providing micro-loans to Chinese farmers; organizing community forums in Serbia. Those efforts continue. The overlapping crises around the globe, however, make disaster response the agency’s most high-profile calling card. And they pose a challenge for an outfit that prides itself on providing efficient, innovative help to the world’s most vulnerable.

“I’d say people in the organization are really looking forward to some disaster-free time,” Lindborg says.

But according to Lindborg and other senior Mercy Corps staff, this extraordinary year has both sharpened the agency’s ability to work at top speed and underscored the strengths of its flexible, creative approach. In this recent chain of calamities, they see opportunities as well as crises.

“We used to talk a lot about a continuum,” says Neal Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps’ CEO. “There was relief, then recovery, then development. We’ve learned that it’s not a continuum, or at least not necessarily a sequential one. You can do relief, recovery and development all at the same time.”

Crises Emerge in Africa

In hindsight, Randy Martin recognizes that no one really knew what Mercy Corps was in for when, this summer, the agency decided to dive into a pair of long-simmering African crises.

“Niger and Uganda are sort of like the opposite of a tsunami or an earthquake,” says Martin, Mercy Corps’ director of global emergency operations. “They’re slow-onset disasters, so to speak.”

In Uganda, a marauding rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army had forced 1.6 million from their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Sudan's Darfur region. Meanwhile, in Niger, locust swarms and persistent drought put millions at risk of starvation. Mercy Corps decided to dispatch an assessment team to each country.

Then came Hurricane Katrina, with Stan and the Pakistan earthquake close behind. To Martin, Mercy Corps’ ability to respond simultaneously to very different, very complex disasters in Africa, South Asia and the Americas has everything to do with flexibility. The D.C.-based emergency operations team he leads includes just four full-time responders. To handle any given emergency scenario - where a grasp of fast-changing facts on the ground and international coordination are equally vital - Mercy Corps pulls together resources from around the world.

“Other organizations that do this kind of work tend to have bigger dedicated emergency-response teams,” says Martin. “But basically, we leverage the whole organization. That allows us to punch above our weight, I guess you’d say.”

On most mornings following the Pakistan earthquake, for example, a telephone conference call buzzed with voices beamed in from Islamabad, Portland, D.C., Khartoum and Hong Kong. The calls galvanized agency specialists of all varieties to keep money, information and personnel flowing to the devastated region.

“Our culture really lends itself to this kind of response,” Nancy Lindborg says. “People don’t stand on ‘it’s not my job’-type thinking. And we’ve built up a reservoir of talent that allows us to, for example, put people who’ve worked in Iraq and Kosovo into the middle of our Hurricane Katrina response.”
According to Martin, Mercy Corps' on-the-ground response - bolstered by the “reservoir of talent” Lindborg talks about - scales up quickly as cash on hand increases.

“When the Pakistan earthquake happened, we were scratching our chins, saying how can we make this work?” Martin says. “So we put in a budget of $20,000. Pretty quickly, we were able to increase that to $50,000. And within a few days, it was up to $1.5 million. There’s a real clear connection between donations and what we’re able to do on the ground.”
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Wed Jan 13, 2010 5:48 pm

dbcooper41 wrote:
DoYouEverWonder


Quote:
Haiti is reeling from a massive earthquake, and U.S. and international agencies are scrambling to respond.

In a statement, Randy Martin, director of global emergency operations for the relief group Mercy Corps said, “Initial reports indicate that the quake has caused extensive damage, and we fear that casualties could be widespread.”

A few hours ago, I received this tweet from my friends Kira Kay and Jason Maloney of the Bureau for International Reporting, currently in Haiti to shoot a documentary. “Planning to head out at first light to Port au Prince,” they write. “Don’t know if we will have communications. Will post when we can #fb.” I’ll be following their tweets and Facebook posts all day.

The Coast Guard has mobilized cutters and aircraft: The service deployed the crews of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane; the Valiant, a Reliance-class cutter; and the medium-endurance cutters Forward, Tahoma and Mohawk. According to a Coast Guard statement, additional Coast Guard assets in the region are also standing by to render assistance if needed.

The U.S. military has a long history of involvement in Haiti, including major interventions like Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994 and 1995. More recently, Haiti has been a destination for military-led humanitarian assistance missions like Continuing Promise 2009, pictured here. The Associated Press, quoting White House sources, says that less than 20 U.S. military personnel are currently in the country, and they are prepared to take part in humanitarian operations.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01 ... aid-haiti/




Where were these guys after Katrina hit?


they were in new orleans.

http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/pakistan/10843



Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps Nancy Lindborg, president of Mercy Corps, takes a deep breath when she thinks about 2005. So far, to understate things just a little, it’s been a highly unusual year.

“You never want to say never,” Lindborg says. “But it does seem like we’re hitting on all cylinders right now in a way we rarely have. The tsunami set the stage for some all-hands-on-deck responses, and there’s really been no letup since.”

Indeed, the Indian Ocean tsunami, 2004’s calamitous closing act, prompted one of Mercy Corps’ most extensive emergency efforts ever. Then, an unfolding food crisis in Niger and boiling-point civil strife in Uganda created a two-headed emergency on either side of Africa. When Hurricane Katrina shattered the Gulf Coast, Mercy Corps embarked on its first-ever full-scale relief effort within the United States. The agency’s Guatemala staff leads international efforts to help areas devastated by floods and mudslides after Tropical Storm Stan swept through Central America. At almost the same time, the 7.6-magnitude earthquake in northern Pakistan monopolized international headlines.

As efforts to save quake survivors entered a second week, Mercy Corps doctors, sanitation specialists and relief organizers ventured into remote mountain valleys in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Meanwhile, Mercy Corps’ far-flung staff - from Portland to Scotland to Hong Kong - scrambled to keep a perpetual motion machine running: logistics, funding, planning, supplies, human resources, security, communications, media relations.

Most of the time, Mercy Corps programs take a practical, low-key, long-term approach to aid: repairing canals in ex-Soviet Georgia; providing micro-loans to Chinese farmers; organizing community forums in Serbia. Those efforts continue. The overlapping crises around the globe, however, make disaster response the agency’s most high-profile calling card. And they pose a challenge for an outfit that prides itself on providing efficient, innovative help to the world’s most vulnerable.

“I’d say people in the organization are really looking forward to some disaster-free time,” Lindborg says.

But according to Lindborg and other senior Mercy Corps staff, this extraordinary year has both sharpened the agency’s ability to work at top speed and underscored the strengths of its flexible, creative approach. In this recent chain of calamities, they see opportunities as well as crises.

“We used to talk a lot about a continuum,” says Neal Keny-Guyer, Mercy Corps’ CEO. “There was relief, then recovery, then development. We’ve learned that it’s not a continuum, or at least not necessarily a sequential one. You can do relief, recovery and development all at the same time.”

Crises Emerge in Africa

In hindsight, Randy Martin recognizes that no one really knew what Mercy Corps was in for when, this summer, the agency decided to dive into a pair of long-simmering African crises.

“Niger and Uganda are sort of like the opposite of a tsunami or an earthquake,” says Martin, Mercy Corps’ director of global emergency operations. “They’re slow-onset disasters, so to speak.”

In Uganda, a marauding rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army had forced 1.6 million from their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis on the scale of Sudan's Darfur region. Meanwhile, in Niger, locust swarms and persistent drought put millions at risk of starvation. Mercy Corps decided to dispatch an assessment team to each country.

Then came Hurricane Katrina, with Stan and the Pakistan earthquake close behind. To Martin, Mercy Corps’ ability to respond simultaneously to very different, very complex disasters in Africa, South Asia and the Americas has everything to do with flexibility. The D.C.-based emergency operations team he leads includes just four full-time responders. To handle any given emergency scenario - where a grasp of fast-changing facts on the ground and international coordination are equally vital - Mercy Corps pulls together resources from around the world.

“Other organizations that do this kind of work tend to have bigger dedicated emergency-response teams,” says Martin. “But basically, we leverage the whole organization. That allows us to punch above our weight, I guess you’d say.”

On most mornings following the Pakistan earthquake, for example, a telephone conference call buzzed with voices beamed in from Islamabad, Portland, D.C., Khartoum and Hong Kong. The calls galvanized agency specialists of all varieties to keep money, information and personnel flowing to the devastated region.

“Our culture really lends itself to this kind of response,” Nancy Lindborg says. “People don’t stand on ‘it’s not my job’-type thinking. And we’ve built up a reservoir of talent that allows us to, for example, put people who’ve worked in Iraq and Kosovo into the middle of our Hurricane Katrina response.”
According to Martin, Mercy Corps' on-the-ground response - bolstered by the “reservoir of talent” Lindborg talks about - scales up quickly as cash on hand increases.

“When the Pakistan earthquake happened, we were scratching our chins, saying how can we make this work?” Martin says. “So we put in a budget of $20,000. Pretty quickly, we were able to increase that to $50,000. And within a few days, it was up to $1.5 million. There’s a real clear connection between donations and what we’re able to do on the ground.”

Sorry, if I wasn't clear. The 'guys' that I was referring to were -
The Coast Guard has mobilized cutters and aircraft: The service deployed the crews of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane; the Valiant, a Reliance-class cutter; and the medium-endurance cutters Forward, Tahoma and Mohawk. According to a Coast Guard statement, additional Coast Guard assets in the region are also standing by to render assistance if needed.


Apparently, the US Military does have the ability to respond to a disaster in a timely manner. This proves there was no excuse for the US to take so long getting help to the people of New Orleans. Instead, Bush left them stranded for almost a week.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby geogeo » Wed Jan 13, 2010 5:57 pm

Some of the more paranoid to talk about possible Tesla-fied earthquake triggering. It's out there out there. Naturally, a strike-slip fault that got 'stuck', as this one was, AND was predicted, AND would be in one of the world' truly failed countries (not even having much natural environment left, unlike most of the rest of the world's most messed-up place. Not a victimless crime even assuming it's GEOLOGY--the elites in collusion with US and France have run the country into the ground, and Latin America has ignored them due to deep-seated racism. Aristide was the best chance that country ever had, and France and the US had him force-ably removed. And btw I suspect most of the tear-jerking stories we'll hear will be of the privileged, foreigners, etc. Haitians, some of the most beautiful people on earth, will remain non-human.

Also, this will be the greatest natural disaster in the history of the Americas, in terms of lives lost, and probably in the top five in human history.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby Howling Rainbows » Wed Jan 13, 2010 6:42 pm

My heart aches for these people. I was in Haiti a few years ago. If I said they live in poverty it would be an understatement. In the so called more civilized areas, where there are automobiles and modern buildings, the people eye European/Americans with both hope and suspicion, and rightly so.

Haiti is more than one island, it is a chain of islands. The landscape, in many areas, barely supports life. What little semblence of an economy they are able to start and its proceeds, are sucked out by banker money, false aid, and exploitation of many types.

Some of the smaller islands have both a desperate and somewhat wonderful culture. On one smaller island I visited, (cannot remember the name) the reefs around the island were fished out and provide little food. The local Haitans had fishing gear made of sticks and string they had gotten from somewhere. They wrapped the string around the stick, swung the bait on the end of the line in a circle, pointed the stick in the desired direction, and then took their finger off stick/spool and the bait would fling in the desired direction. The line would spool off the stick and act as a primitive fishing reel. They wound the string back around the stick swiftly to retrieve the bait and give it action and movement. Primitive fishing reel. They used bones for hooks, and some of the lucky ones actually had fish hooks they had gotten from passengers on cruise boats that docked near the island. Some of them used aluminum cans for their stick/reel that they had gotten from Westerners somehow.

A few of them had small wooden boats made by hand. The boats had small sails attached to a long wooden pole. If the wind wasn't blowing strongly enough they would wag the pole back and forth to create wind in the sail to give the tiny boat propulsion.

Small fires burned in a few places around the island during meal time. They made their own charcoal by burning what little wood they could find. They would char the wood and then use it for charcoal because the charcoal would burn much longer than simply burning the wood itself.

The landscape on this island was very steep vertically speaking, and composed mostly of rock. There were a few crags and flat spots on which soil has gathered and greenery grows in sparce amounts. These few places where a little bit of greenery grow are coveted and passed from one family to the next due to the fact that they are currently inhabited by the current family. These families are considered the wealthy families on the small island. One half of the island the people spoke French, and over the sharp and steep peak of the other side of the island people spoke English.

Near the top of the island there was a roundish rock structure where they held their voodoo ceremonies. A girl from South Africa, with long blonde hair believe it or not, took me to a voodoo ceremony. She worked for a cruise line and stayed around the area giving personal tours when she was off work. They painted themselves elaborately and danced around a small fire. I didn't understand most of what was going on so I just watched in amazement. She also took me to a small private island owned by a rich frenchman. The frenchman had a 99 year lease on the island. On this island there was a natural spring of fresh water and a small house perched on a cliff. The frenchman had a local Haitan squatting on his property to keep the other Haitans from looting the place and carrying his house off for the wood it could offer. The frenchman had a huge sailboat and frequently sailed to the area to stay in his small private paradise.

Even through the circumstances the peoples on the smaller islands lived in they seemed much happier and more well adjusted than the peoples in the more modern areas. They smiled with big toothy grins. They had a happiness to their faces that I seldom see in other more modern places.

Bless the people of Haiti.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Jan 13, 2010 6:57 pm

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Death was everywhere Wednesday in this devastated city of 2 million. Bodies of tiny children were piled next to schools. Corpses of women lay on the street with stunned expressions frozen on their faces as flies began to gather. Bodies of men were covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets.

Moreover, untold numbers were still trapped after a powerful earthquake Tuesday crushed thousands of structures — from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the local U.N. headquarters.

As nations around the world mobilized to send help, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told Reuters that he believed the casualties would be "in the range of thousands of dead."

Soon after, however, Bellerive told CNN that "I believe we are well over 100,000" dead, while Haitian Sen. Youri Latortue said it could be 500,000.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34829978/ns ... arthquake/

Waking up today to headlines like "Haiti Capital Destroyed" is pretty unnerving.

The Haitians have had to suffer some of the most dehumanizing conditions in just the last 15 years alone, and I remember following the saga of the *almost* US war in Haiti in 1994.

But like the Turkish earthquake and the apocalyptic Dec 2004 Tsunami/Earthquake, I fear we'll be seeing more of these.
Its times like this I wish people like Goro Adachi were wrong.

And I have to disagree strongly with dbcooper: These are not manmade events in the least.
However, they do fit an almost apocalyptic pattern it would seem.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Wed Jan 13, 2010 7:54 pm

8bitagent wrote:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Death was everywhere Wednesday in this devastated city of 2 million. Bodies of tiny children were piled next to schools. Corpses of women lay on the street with stunned expressions frozen on their faces as flies began to gather. Bodies of men were covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets.

Moreover, untold numbers were still trapped after a powerful earthquake Tuesday crushed thousands of structures — from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the local U.N. headquarters.

As nations around the world mobilized to send help, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told Reuters that he believed the casualties would be "in the range of thousands of dead."

Soon after, however, Bellerive told CNN that "I believe we are well over 100,000" dead, while Haitian Sen. Youri Latortue said it could be 500,000.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34829978/ns ... arthquake/

Waking up today to headlines like "Haiti Capital Destroyed" is pretty unnerving.

The Haitians have had to suffer some of the most dehumanizing conditions in just the last 15 years alone, and I remember following the saga of the *almost* US war in Haiti in 1994.

But like the Turkish earthquake and the apocalyptic Dec 2004 Tsunami/Earthquake, I fear we'll be seeing more of these.
Its times like this I wish people like Goro Adachi were wrong.

And I have to disagree strongly with dbcooper: These are not manmade events in the least.
However, they do fit an almost apocalyptic pattern it would seem.


There have always been earthquakes and tsunamis. The problem is that now there's a lot more people and the majority of them live in densely populated areas and live in poorly designed structures that fall apart easily. Haiti is just one more of many disasters waiting to happen.

Instead of spending half of the US budget on defense, we'd all be a lot safer and better off if we spent it on help everyone live a decent life. What the US has allowed to happen to Haiti is a crime against humanity.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby Blue » Wed Jan 13, 2010 8:09 pm

How awful for Haiti yet I can't help but feel a bit desensitized since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Wasn't that about 300,000 killed? It was simply too hard to believe those pictures and grasp that over a 1/4 million people were killed within hours. And now another 100,000+ today. As the world population has grown it gets harder and harder to comprehend that there are that many of us and that large swaths of us will be taken out quickly by the ever larger and more frequent natural disasters, thanks to the unstoppable climate changes.

And no one can really predict when or where or how bad these disasters will be.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby 8bitagent » Wed Jan 13, 2010 8:58 pm

DoYouEverWonder wrote:

Instead of spending half of the US budget on defense, we'd all be a lot safer and better off if we spent it on help everyone live a decent life. What the US has allowed to happen to Haiti is a crime against humanity.


Thank you! IF the US is going to be interventionalist, they should balloon USAID budgets, and focus on helping people...now blowing them up.

I agree, the documentaries Ive seen on Haiti and reports I've read are just astonishingly soul crushing.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby Howling Rainbows » Wed Jan 13, 2010 9:25 pm

Apparently, the US Military does have the ability to respond to a disaster in a timely manner. This proves there was no excuse for the US to take so long getting help to the people of New Orleans. Instead, Bush left them stranded for almost a week.


ditto
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby Uncle $cam » Thu Jan 14, 2010 7:02 am

For Haiti:







Suffering raises up those souls that are truly great; it is only small souls that are made mean-spirited by it.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby tazmic » Thu Jan 14, 2010 6:28 pm

"The Santo Domingo [Dominican Republic] airport is full of aid workers, rescue teams. It is turning into the humanitarian hub."

But BBC news reports no aid actually getting through yet...

"People are starting to get frustrated, and there is a sense that the mood could change. Bodies are starting to pile up ... and there is a stench filling the air... The help really isn't here yet."

Live: Haiti earthquake
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby 8bitagent » Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:23 pm

As many feared, a lot of the relief flights and aid is just sitting there. Many of the relief ships and vehicles are being turned away, or just sitting:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/ ... tml?hpt=T1

I think a lot of people out there think the city was all just shantys, but from all the pictures and video it seems like the biggest problem is that a lot of the people are pinned down or crushed by endless tons of concrete. So unless they can move in heavy construction rigs, I can't see how they'll get that many people out alive.

Reading about how they follow the screams of children and just people in general, but they just die by the time they end up pulling them out.

Here, a mother saw as her two children died moments after being pulled out:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/14/hait ... tml?hpt=T2

As for tolls of recent quakes in the last 20 years:
250,000-300,000 plus died in the Indian/Indonesian 2004 earthquake/tsunami combo,
69,197 died in the 2008 Chinese quake
35,000 plus died in the 1988 Iranian quake
30,000 plus died in the 2003 Iranian quake
25,000 plus died in the 1988 Armenian quake
20,000 plus died in the 2001 Indian quake
17,118 died in the 1999 Turkish quake
9,748 died in the 1993 Indian quake
6,433 died in the Japanese 1995 quake

These may seem like simply statistics, but I feel to a lot of Westerners because these all happened "over there" in non white areas...there's a large disconnect from the immense suffering.
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Re: Major catastrophe as earthquake smashes Haiti

Postby 8bitagent » Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:59 pm

I started tearing up seeing this report on how they believe up to 700 children may have been crushed in one elementary school that is just buried beneath many tons of collapsed concrete.

Images of hundreds of bodies piled on top of eachother all over the place. Really sad video of children with severe disfigurement and injuries, kids with missing facial features. Scenes of brains and organs coming out of people. I hope people see this, because I think people are severely out of touch with reality given people's obsession with entertainment, infotainment and being coddled in a protective blanket.

And yet amazingly, the news keeps interrupting with "urgent terror alert to the US from al Qaeda in Yemen planning more attacks", with stepped up security. The news media is showing "updated" pictures of what bin Laden may look like, saying he may have greatly altered his appearence...I guess the media is trying to desperately keep the "al Qaeda" scaremongering alive and well.
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