Breaking News: 7.0 Earthquake in Haiti

[Slargos]

Besides, I wouldn't call Chile a modern nation.

Why not?

Because I get uncomfortable doing that? 

Mostly though, any nation that has supplied Sweden with leftist welfare parasites is by definition not a modern nation.

[Caliga]

The Ainu would disagree

They are being erased a little more every year though.

It's because we don't ask for Ainu often enough.  People just need to take Ed's advice more often. 

[garbon]

It's because we don't ask for Ainu often enough.  People just need to take Ed's advice more often. 

Speak for yourself.

[Ed Anger]

I noticed Geraldo is embedded with the 82nd over there. Last time he was with an Airborne unit, he was giving away positions on TV.

[Caliga]

Geraldo

Well, there will be plenty of empty bank vaults in collapsed buildings for him to melodramatically open.

[Ed Anger]

Geraldo

Well, there will be plenty of empty bank vaults in collapsed buildings for him to melodramatically open.

heh.

[Razgovory]

Also Raz laughs.

[jimmy olsen]

140,000 Dead & 300,000 homeless. There are no words.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703657604575005423130825384.html

Time Running Out on Haiti Survivors

By DIONNE SEARCEY  And KEVIN NOBLET

PORT-AU-PRINCE—In Haiti's earthquake, every city block is its own epicenter.

On Friday, near Rue St. Gerard and Route des Dalles, a small university lay in rubble, its six concrete stories neatly pancaked. A law office sat in ruin, a trapped woman moaning inside. The hillside across the street is a red-dirt grave for 32 victims.

The consensus among quake experts was that about only 24 hours remained to save the trapped. And outside help hasn't yet arrived in this neighborhood. Crews of foreign rescue workers did pass by Thursday, leaving orange-and-black marks indicating locations buried survivors. Then they moved on.There were some isolated successes. Elsewhere in this ruined city of two million, rescuers on Friday saved a woman who sang "Jesus will save me" just before medics cut off her leg to free her.

Yet already, the focus is shifting from the dead or the trapped to those struggling for food and shelter.
Hundreds of thousands are homeless, tens of thousands are wounded, and nearly everyone lacks clean drinking water, raising the risk of a secondary wave of water-borne disease and death in coming days.

U.S. military crews got the capital's airport working, and cargo planes delivered rescue supplies. But progress remained slow.
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, for instance, floated five miles offshore, unable to find a place to unload supplies because of extensive damage to Haiti's main port. Residents are getting increasingly desperate.
There were scattered reports of looting and violence, reflecting the challenge of policing and governance. Small, roving bands of young men with machetes raided several wrecked homes, the Associated Press reported.

Senior U.S. officials said Washington is beginning to map out a reconstruction plan. The State Department's point person on Haiti, Cheryl Mills, stressed that Washington isn't drafting plans for some kind of U.S. interim administrator. The Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed in the earthquake. Other estimates are higher. Haiti's secretary of state for public safety, told Reuters that the death toll could hit 140,000

Among the living on Friday were people like Junior Lerolien. Three days after losing his entire family, he walked the streets in search of water. The 22-year-old tried to get in to the United Nations compound near the city's airport, but was turned back by guards. Mr. Lerolien was outside his house in the Delmas district Tuesday when he felt the shock. "I saw the house collapse," he said. His mother, father, three brothers and sister were inside. The rubble was so deep, he didn't even try to dig them out. "My whole family is buried," Mr. Lerolien said.

United Nations disaster experts said at least 10% of housing in the Haitian capital was destroyed, leaving about 300,000 homeless. The U.N. launched an appeal to raise $550 million to help survivors.

Just a few kilometers from the intersection of Rue St. Gerard and Route del Dalles, the national soccer stadium has become a makeshift hospital. Several hundred people turned up looking for treatment.

"No gloves, nothing to sew wounds, no antiseptic," said Wadner Lima, a volunteer Haitian paramedic. Mr. Lima tended to a boy with a head wound and a man whose leg was badly burned. His medical kit, a small red tackle box, had been depleted. "We just have some gauze left."

Outside the stadium, refugees clamored to board buses out of the city. A dead body lay atop a mattress.Across Port-au-Prince, doctors and nurses provided medical attention in almost medieval conditions. Outside Haiti's national public-health laboratory, scores of wounded pleaded to get inside, where a squad of Belgian first-responders and Canadian military medics operated a field hospital.
People carried injured relatives on makeshift gurneys. One the sidewalk outside the gates, a teenage girl lay near an old woman on a table with a crumpled umbrella shielding a bleeding knee.

A young man, eyes wide with terror, was carried by compatriots on a piece of plywood. His distended leg leaked puss. "Now it is emergency medicine, like war medicine—amputations, cleaning wounds, keeping people alive," said Ronald Ackermans, a nurse and part of a team of 60 or so medics and search-and-rescue personnel who flew in from Brussels.

One of the problems is what to do with the dead. Back on Rue St. Gerard in the Carrefour Feuille neighborhood, people rubbed limes on their nostrils to stymie the smell of death.

The earthquake remade this neighborhood in a few, violent seconds. An art gallery is in ruins; so is a pharmacy. No one knows what became of the old lady who used to sell rice from a boiling pot on the corner.

Clare Lydie Parent, who is mayor of the hillside town of Petionville, stood amidst the rubble in an official orange vest on Friday, helping direct rescue efforts at what had been the law offices—the building with a survivor in it.

"I heard the voice this morning," Ms. Parent said. "She gave me her name. She said, 'Mary.'"

Next door, at the small Universite Ste. Gerard, there were no orange vests, just young men scooping and tugging with their bare hands.
On Friday, residents heard voices and were convinced that several students remained alive in a basement classroom that had room for 60.

"They are calling to us, 'We're here, please help us,'" said Frederic Sergefils, who believed his brother was among those inside. At one point, one of the rescuers used a chair seat to dig into the wreckage. Just down the street, a wide-eyed Marie Yolene, 22, looked at the wreckage of a four-room house she shared with her three sisters, aged 21, 18 and 15.
The chairs and beds inside lay open to the street: The exterior walls had collapsed outward.

Three of the four were in the house when the quake hit.
The fourth, Marie, had been at the city's Sacred Heart Cathedral—which collapsed, killing many. Yet all four survived. "I was so lucky," Marie said.
—Jose de Cordoba
and Charles Forelle contributed to this report.

[citizen k]

Washington person dies in Haiti:

http://www.khq.com/global/story.asp?s=11829574

[jimmy olsen]

First hand look at the docks and it doesn't look good. Man on the scene estimates it might take 6-12 months to rebuild and that meanwhile the nation will simply starve to death.

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/01/15/candiotti.haiti.port.damage.cnn

[Fate]

God wills it.

[jimmy olsen]

A moving report.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjbBn11bSVA&feature=player_embedded#

[Razgovory]

140,000 Dead & 300,000 homeless. There are no words.

Well some words.  But also numbers.

[jimmy olsen]

140,000 Dead & 300,000 homeless. There are no words.

Well some words.  But also numbers.

[Neil]

140,000 Dead & 300,000 homeless. There are no words.

Why not?  This is what happens when a natural disaster strikes a pre-civilized country.