Haiti earthquake - hell on earth
 

48 photos some of the first from the scene.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/201..._in_haiti.html

When my wife told me Haiti had been struck by an earthquake I knew it was going to be bad. Ive been there and know what the buildings and citys were like. Worst case scenario.

Already a hell even without earthquakes.

Hope the whether holds back for a-while.
No shelter, very limmited food, probably no drinking water, and a traumitized population.
This is going to take a massive effort, and it has to move fast.
A real Mission Impossible situation that has to be dealt with.

Looks the same as it usually does... only now everything is knocked over.

hope the recovery is swift and sure.

best of luck to them.

I can assure you the US is responding. Currently the Port au Prince A/P is functioning but only three flights a day. The tower is destroyed. VFR daylight flights only. USAID is responding.

Ja. Hillary was on the danish news shortly after the event.
Wasn't she on the US news?

I presume every power in the region is responding.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the USNS Comfort is steaming there as fast as it can, if it was at its home port of Baltimore. A whole lot of staff will probably disappear from the naval hospital at Bethesda.

The German THW has already sent in an advance party to check the situation and guide the aid where it's needed the most (they could just mark the island and say: There!).

If you look through all the photos you will see some forces being mobilized from Korea, the UK, the US and some others.

I think they know by now to not wait on the UN but to just go ahead and do something.

The place is a mess. USAID is on it. This is what USAID does.

Heard about this while at work. One of my co-workers said that hundreds of thousands of people may be dead. Terrible. :(

It's great to see the world reacting so quickly and coordinating aid efforts. No matter how much they do, it won't be enough, but at least they are helping.

In another way it's sad to see that the US can respond to everyone else so quickly at the same time we leave our own citizens [Katrina] without help for days, even more in some cases.

What is really tragic is the fact that there whole infrastructure is in shambles, including the 3 hospitals, water, electric, sewage.

God help them recover.

agreed.

and i lay 100% of the blame on two sorry ass people for the whole Katrina thing.

Governor Blanco

Mayor Nagin

The Federal Government from The President down were ALL OVER the two of them to get rolling and they barely bothered to get off the couch.

so who gets the blame?

Bush

im no big Bush fan... but any old fool can see he caught a lot of misplaced anger and flak for that whole Katrina thing. The Feds did their job on that one... their only failure IMHO was Michael D. Brown being the FEMA director... should have had someone with more emergency management experience in that job.

Katrina... like Haiti, are disasters in more ways than one.

it will take a lot of time to bounce back from such an event... especially for such a poverty ridden place like Haiti

I feel bad for this. Some reports says could be more than 100.000 victims, Haiti is the poorest country in america, life expectation is only 53 years :nope:, let see from what wood we and our politicians are made from, i wish they send big big help. One thing i can do is to call one of those paid phone numbers to help with a couple of dollars, if you saw some way to donate do it. It can help a lot.

With situations like this it's always the first few hours that are most critical, after that it's only stragglers that come ouf of the ruins. There should be help on standby pretty much all the time when it comes to earth quake prone areas.

Very interesting link SteamWake, thanks.

How uncomfortable it is to see those photos and feeling powerless...:-?:cry:

Where any of those working before the quake, the place is a mess to begin with...
After the acute situation is over, further help should come with strict conditions.
But we will probably see the aid being stolen and hunreds of thousands claiming to need a refuge in NA or Europe.

Tragicle on a big scale.

Apparently the Carl Vinson is on the way so that should help boost the helo ability in the area, since most of the roads are most likely shot to bits what'll be needed is good airlifting ability. Also the USS Bataan is on its way with a Marine expeditionary unit, which should help with feet on the ground.
It was quite a shallow quake too by the sounds of it, and the epicenter was close to the capital, hence the devastation.

I heard a figure of 500,000 estimated dead on the World Service last night, but that seems to have been reduced to 'tens of thousands', but even so...that's a unconceivably large amount of people.
It's not going to be pretty down there over the coming months. Not at all.