Haiti Descends Into Chaos
Sadly, itwill only get worse before it gets better.
The infrastructure is shattered, what little and antiquated there was before this happened, the airport is jammed and low on jet fuel, the port is devastated and the piers are damaged. And once the relief supplies get ashore the roads are clogged with debris…and people who have no place else to sleep.
Thank god it’s not July and 100 degrees, at least.
World Stuff | Mr. Bingley | 
January 15, 2010 8:32 am
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I’m about SICK of these TV anchors (Sawyer and Ifill, for starters) with the “What’s TAKING SO LONG?!?!?!?” Ifill was especially egregious when Lehrer had just ~ two seconds before ~ listened to Bill Clinton explain that there’re no working cranes on the docks to offload anything. Mind lifting bulldozers off the ship decks onto the dockside was impossible as well, thanks to Yoda being inconveniently stuck on Dagobah.
Stupid fucking people.
And when those machetes and burning tire necklaces make their inevitable reappearance? I hope Dianne Sawyer and her peeps’re packing.
Haiti does anarchy well.
I don’t want to cause a riot on your blog, Lord knows it would take forever before the Red Cross arrived, but amidst my profound sadness for the people of Haiti, I sure hope they can correct many of their self-made woes and understand that, when it’s all said and done, everyone needs to come together and work together and live together.
don, i agree 100%. i’ve been to haiti a couple of times (albeit 30 years ago) and i found them to be the sweetest people living in the most heartbreaking of conditions, in large part due to the complete corruption of their ruling class. but it’s not taking forever for the red cross and other folks to arrive; they’re already there. there are hundreds of tons of supplies at the airport and thousands of tons of supplies that will arrive in the port over the next few days…but it is all getting clogged up. let me quote from an email i received today from an organization i support (http://www.heart911.org/) :
But there are times when good intentions and the overwhelming desire to “do something” is an impediment to the first line professional Search & Rescue teams and ultimately hurts those we want to help. Our colleagues of NYTF-1 are on the ground and our federal friends stationed in the Dominican Republic are reporting that a mountain of supplies without a delivery strategy will soon strangle supply lines. Groups arriving without authorization or mission orders will siphon resources without providing necessary services and will burden the already stressed response community.
we’ve got several thousand Marines and Army troops on their way there now who will clear the roads and port so the supplies can flow in. that will take time but it has to be done first or nothing will get through.
I guarantee the Dominican Army is turned out and ready to hold off an invasion of starving Haitians.
There’s a lot of journalistic armchair quarterbacking going on about the speed of the relief efforts. I wish people would save the analyses until later. It’s way too early for either praise or condemnation. As one frustrated UN worker said, providing tons of water, etc. is not as easy as sending a photo via Twitter.
Alas, Sue, that’s all too true. Logistics is never simple or quick, even with an established transportation system, a point that I have to repeatedly make with people.
And with the situation in Haiti? That scares the heck out of me.
“As one frustrated UN worker said, providing tons of water, etc. is not as easy as sending a photo via Twitter.”
Especially in a region without even reasonable infrastructure before the quake.
I pray the “two hundred thousand dead” figure ends up so much media hyperbole.