14 January, 2010 — Salon.com

Country’s broken infrastructure makes help extremely hard to deliver

The U.N. says rescue workers and relief goods are pouring into Haiti from around the world, but aid workers are running into huge problems reaching people trapped under buildings or feeding hungry survivors.

U.N. spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs called quake-hit Haiti a logistical nightmare.

The World Food Program said Thursday that damage to Haiti’s port in the capital Port-au-Prince is preventing ship deliveries to quake-struck region. It said the city’s airport is open but straining to handle dozens of incoming flights of supplies and rescuers.

Desperate quake survivors, fearing more temblors, are also standing in the middle of roads and slowing the transport of food and other crucial aid.

The World Health Organization said heavy damage to at least eight Port-au-Prince hospitals is slowing doctors’ ability to treat the thousands of injured.
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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
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BEIJING (AP) — Asian leaders cited their own experiences with natural disasters Thursday in offering help to quake-shattered Haiti as part of a massive international effort to alleviate the effects of the catastrophe.

Haitian officials have predicted a horrific death toll of more than 100,000 in the wake of the magnitude-7 quake Tuesday that left most of the capital Port-au-Prince in rubble.

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15 January, 2010 5:53pm

[I am updating this page as and when I get more newslinks and moving it to the top of the home page. The Ed.]

The Undercovered Country: Haiti as journalists have known it
For once, it seems that journalists are bristling on behalf of Haiti, a place usually painted by wariness and fear and resigned pity. Haitians themselves may be getting something like good press, no small development for the most maligned people in the hemisphere. The urgen…

Talking heads’ comments about Haiti draw fire from both sides
The catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has already elicited a number of controversial statements from some of America’s best-known talking heads. Rush Limbaugh, the Rev. Pat Robertson and Keith Olbermann generated outrage, from the left and the right, for comments that variou…

With Resources Limited, the Media Struggle to Convey Disaster
The Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan is a veteran of the world’s worst calamities, but on television on Thursday afternoon, as he stood beside one of the piles of rubble that pockmark Port-au-Prince, Haiti, he broke down. He had watched a woman wailing in the street, h…

Destruction in Haiti Causes Array of Communications Difficulties
The devastating earthquake in Haiti has spurred an enormous mobilization of media personnel to the region. But the destruction has thrown up an array of practical and communications difficulties in an already technically lagging country. Fresh water is scarce. Cellular and …

What You’re Not Hearing About Haiti (But Should Be)
In the hours following Haiti’s devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated an…

In Haiti, getting there the hardest part of getting the story
As the magnitude of destruction in Haiti unfolded Wednesday, U.S. television networks scrambled to get reporters into the devastated country, a task greatly complicated by the shaky security and broken infrastructure. With the air traffic control tower at the Port-au-Prince…

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14 January, 2010 — SocialistWorker.org

Ashley Smith describes the natural and not-so-natural factors that contributed to the devastation when Haiti was struck by a strong earthquake.

A man carries an injured woman from the rubble after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince (Clarens Renois | AFP)

A DEVASTATING earthquake, the worst in 200 years, struck Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, laying waste to the city and killing untold numbers of people. The quake measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, and detonated more than 30 aftershocks, all more than 4.5 in magnitude, through the night and into Wednesday morning.

The earthquake toppled poorly constructed houses, hotels, hospitals and even the capital city’s main political buildings, including the presidential palace. The collapse of so many structures sent a giant cloud into the sky, which hovered over the city, raining dust down onto the wasteland below.

According to some estimates, more than 100,000 people may have died, in a metropolis of 2 million people. Those that survived are living in the streets, afraid to return inside any building that remains standing.

Around the world, Haitians struggled to contact their family and friends in the devastated country. But most could not reach their loved ones since phone lines were down throughout the count

One person who did reach relatives, Garry Pierre-Pierre, editor and publisher of the Brooklyn-based Haitian Times, stated, ‘People are in shock. They’re afraid to go out in the streets for obvious reasons, and most of them can’t get inside their homes. A lot of people are sitting or sleeping in front of the rubble that used to be their homes.’

President René Préval issued an emergency appeal for humanitarian aid. He described the scene in Port-au-Prince as ‘unimaginable. 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. All the hospitals are packed with people. It’s a catastrophe.’

The weak Préval government was unable to respond to the crisis, and the United Nations–which occupies Haiti with close to 9,000 troops–was completely unprepared to manage the situation. Many UN leaders and troops died in buildings that collapsed, including their own headquarters.

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