Possibly more than 100,000 dead. Aftershocks are still rattling the country.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/13/haiti.updates/index.html
“Parliament has collapsed. 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.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8456819.stm
Countries all over sending aid. Donations are already in demand:
100,000 killed? Wow.
Why do 40-50K Americans live in Haiti?
Druglords.
I was going to post something about this last night, but I wasn’t sure where it belonged and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say.
This is an immense tragedy. Poor Haiti just can’t catch a break. Utter poverty, unstable political regime, and seemingly regular natural disasters. The death toll from this is going to be shocking in the end.
My sympathies to anyone here with friends or family in Haiti. Even if they survived the quake, it sounds as if conditions on the ground are nightmarish. Hospitals collapsed. Even their maximum security prison collapsed, and apparently the inmates that didn’t die escaped. So you can add that to the chaos reigning in the capital.
Although the quake magnitude was lower, this looks like a disaster on the scale of what happened in Indonesia a few years back. It’s going to take a major international effort.
I read that one of the major prisons collapsed, too… Weird not even to have a chance to get out of the building.
My wife is going to the DR tomorrow with a friend of hers for a few days. Sounds like there was little to no impact on that half of the island, but it still has me mildly concerned.
prisoners whom survived escaped…
My friend is in Santo Domingo and was IMing me at the very moment of the quake. (“I think we’re having an earthquake!” “WTF are you still doing online!?”) I don’t think you have to worry. It sounds like things are pretty normal there.
You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti. The donation will be charged to your cellphone bill.
100% of donations go directly to the redcross. The organization handling the SMS, mGive, has waved their usual cut.
http://blog.mgive.com/2010/01/13/mgive-asks-you-to-text-haiti-to-90999-to-give-10-to-red-cross/
Doctors Without Borders is also soliciting donations for the effort. Their hospital there has collapsed, and they’re scrambling to get surgery-capable again.
Jesus. And it wasn’t that great in Haiti to begin with…
Of course I’ll chip in a few bucks for Medecins sans Frontieres.
Both good charities. Thanks for the links and reminders.
As someone who bites regularly on a Steam deal, I totally went to the red cross site and made a donation towards the international relief fund. Games aren’t as important as they were yesterday (I’m paraphrasing a televised twitter post). I hope more people here donate also. I am so tempted to pop into the bargain thread and link to this post, perhaps I could just say its a bargain on Karma?
Jorune
Well I tried out my idea in the Bargain Thread and hope it works. But alas, the following 2 posts are people already flaming me. I’m amazed at how some people can be so hostile and negative. They could have easily just ignored it. Won’t respond to them there since the whole point is to be positive.
jorune
Thanks for the Doctors Without Borders link. Donation sent.
EDIT: BTW, I wasn’t really flaming you, it was more a general observation of an annoying routine I can easily imagine happening around the internet.
FWIW, I just clicked your link in the bargain thread and made a donation Jorune.
I donated to Doctors Without Borders this morning. Didn’t have a lot to give, but every little bit helps!
Some good relief efforts coming in:
