I fear that the loss of life caused by Katrina will seem almost trivial compared to this disaster. Buildings in Haiti are just not built to withstand anything close to this severe of earthquake.
Posted on 01/13/2010 12:29:52 PM PST by Steelfish
Haiti Chief Says Thousands May Be Dead
Huge swaths of the capital, Port-au-Prince, lay in ruins, and thousands of people were feared dead in the rubble of government buildings, foreign aid offices and shantytowns. Limbs protruded from piles of disintegrated concrete, and muffled cries emanated from deep inside the wrecks of buildings, as this impoverished nation struggled to grasp the grim, still unknown toll from its worst earthquake in more than 200 years.
Scenes of destruction defined the city. Concrete homes collapsed on hillsides. Hospitals overflowed with victims. The Canape Vert hospital was surrounded by collapsed buildings.
With the electricity and phone service out and supplies of fresh water dwindling, The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said Haiti was facing a “major humanitarian emergency.”
The Haitian president, René Préval, told The Miami Herald that the toll was “unimaginable” and estimated that thousands had died. Among those feared dead were the chief of the United Nations mission in Haiti and Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, the archbishop of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The quake struck just before 5 p.m. Tuesday about 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, ravaging the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroyed some of its most important cultural symbols. The domed white presidential palace and the cathedral collapsed, the Ministry of Justice was destroyed, and the country’s national prison suffered extensive damage, a United Nations spokesman said.
“All of the hospitals are packed with people,” he added. “It is a catastrophe.”
The earthquake left the country in a shambles, tangling efforts to provide relief to an estimated 3 million people who the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said had been affected by the quake.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval was quoted as saying. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
Horrible! The children. God Bless them ALL!
Haiti has always been described as a humanitarian disaster, but this takes it off the scale. The next disaster to face them will be do gooder liberals and their wannabe do gooder conservatives mucking it up with their “Big Compassion” shtick.
In the metaphysical world that the media and Dems occupy does this mean that Haiti is Obama’s fault? Just askin.
How late in the day do they keep kids in schools? Hopefully most were playing outside when the quake hit.
I fear that the loss of life caused by Katrina will seem almost trivial compared to this disaster. Buildings in Haiti are just not built to withstand anything close to this severe of earthquake.
Waiting for the climate change spin and Bushes fault-Iraq war rhetoric....Seems like that’s a mainstay amongst libs these days when confronting any natural disaster.
I have been told that our company may provide some support and since I have the shortest tail, I might be on my way.
I must be one of the "do gooder conservatives". While I'm wholeheartedly against much of the UN, and loathe US foreign aid to these corrupt and incompetent regimes, I am ABSOLUTELY and unabashedly for the hundreds of NGOs that do terrific and saintly work for the people of these failed states.
I have been to Haiti a number of times - both working for the US government, and with Catholic Charities, and I can tell you that without the work of these NGOs, Haitian despair would beyond imagination.
Your comments remind me of someone who has only seen abject poverty on television. If you had ever taken the time to personally visit these kinds of countries, you wouldn't be so quick to ridicule "big compassion".
Wow. Keep us posted and God Bless.
Some good may come of this after all.
Well the ‘news’ is talking about it, and talking and talking and showing the same pictures and video over and over and over. But why aren’t they showing anything, really? It’s only 700 miles from our shores!
I'm afraid that this will rival or surpass the 2004 Boxing Day disaster in terms of death. The only thing that is remotely "lucky" about this tragedy, is the fact that it occurred during the daytime, and not at night when most people would have been inside and asleep.
thanks!
Pat needs to shut his pie hole and not judge lest...
Please, stop judging Pat Robertson.
The Catholic Archbishop was killed too. But then Pat might have his own take on that too.
I just want to cry looking at the pictures out of Haiti. It's already desperately poor, and now this.
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