[Cnn] 7.0 Earthquake in Haiti

That small country gets hit by so many disasters. The year we were hit with Ike I think they had 3 or 4 storms rip through the country.

 

I have a friend that lives in the Bahamas and is not coming back to the states until Sunday. Anywho I just called her to make sure everything was okay and she is freaking out right now because of the tsunami watch which she said got canceled but is still scared because of the possible aftershock.

 

Bahamas should be fine since the waves should be blocked by Cuba.

 

They said that on the Radio, terrible news.

I have a lot of Haitian friends since I live in Miami, hope their ok.

 

Sounds pretty horrible. Newscasts are saying it's hard to get any solid information from there right now. Poor people

 

I live in the Eastern Caribbean for a good portion of the year and we didn't feel anything today. It was just cloudy which was a bit odd in itself, but nothing else. If I was in Puerto Rico I would be more worried.

 

This sounds awful. The Presidential palace and parliament is in ruins, Port Au Prince's Airport is down and emergency services are almost non-existent.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34829978/ns/world_news-americas/?GT1=43001

 

I heard one of their hospitals collapsed.

 

The Red Cross website has ways to donate on their web page.

 

Hell in Haiti. I'm left wondering how the survivors are supposed to live and where they are supposed to go? Are they supposed to live on the streets among the rubble? Just a terrible situation. I plan on donating because I would want someone to help me if I were in that situation. I hope a lot of you feel and do the same. They were already living in poverty to begin with and now this happens. I hope aid and food/water arrive soon...because these people could literally starve and/or die from injuries waiting on help. And, to think of all the people buried under concrete and rubble right now in a city with literally no first responders. The citizens are basically the rescuers right now. This is just a really sad and horrible situation. I hope the world responds quickly and heavily. Also, I'm not clear what to make by the lack of posts in this thread at this point. 9/11 and the tsunami were inundated with posters. Yet, this doesn't qualify along those lines? Are we that unaffected because this is Haiti and full of poor third world people? How about posting and showing you care? I know earthquakes are boring and frequent...but we are talking about a densely populated city basically in our backyard where casualties could be tremendous. This is a big deal.

 

Haiti was already one of the poorest most environmentally demolished countries in the world. This is just one more blow for a hopelessly impoverished and suffering population.

 

we're too busy watching moes meltdown. :grin:

(and yes donating is a good idea for us who can)

 

Here are some photos taken by a twitter user and posted to his Twitpic account:

http://twitpic.com/photos/LisandroSuero

Among others, he has a before/after of the presidential palace.

 

There probably isn't a single building in that city that would be considered safe to be in after such a quake and all the aftershocks. If you have to rebuild a city, then these people have to be relocated somewhere. They are going to have a difficult situation for years to come...and I bet reconstruction will be very slow. These people may have to be absorbed into other areas of Haiti...if that is even possible given the dense populations and size of Haiti. Maybe they should close Gitmo and convert it into a shelter or something? Or, move some of these people to Detroit on C-130s? Hell...I don't know.

 

I heard they just got the airport opened and aid is arriving. On the news Hait's US ambassador said the biggest need right now is a hospital ship since Port Au Prince's hospital collapsed.

 

Those pictures on CNN and Yahoo News are insane. Port au Prince is completely destroyed, and the people have nowhere to go. Hopefully help arrives from neighboring countries ASAP. People have been sleeping in rubble.

 

I really hope that in the reconstruction from this disaster that the Haitians can figure out a way to break the longterm cycles of poverty and the environmental degredation that has helped create poverty. As bad as this situation is there could be an opportunity to build new infrastructure that can help build up their economy.

 

Well...it wouldn't make sense for them to construct a new city with the poor quality buildings that will just topple in another quake. After all, they are living on a fault line. They might as well just live in tents if that is the case. But, given how poor the country is, it doesn't seem likely future construction will be any better....unless other countries fund the construction adequately to build to a higher standard some infrastructure that can withstand earthquakes. I dunno how that is going to work. Our own country couldn't even address New Orleans reconstruction adequately.

 

One problem though is that NOLA already had a developed and entrenched infrastructure along with an existing building industry that built in a certain way. Haiti is probably not in the same situation and there is a lot of building technologies and practice that can be done cheaply, along with other things like distributed solar and wireless communication that can be set up that are cheaper than the infrastructure we use. In fact many of ideas were proposed in the wake of Katrina with the biggest impediment not being cost but being existing regulations and resistance from traditional builders.