Help Haiti
From Breitbart:
Ace notes:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after a powerful earthquake flattened the president's palace, the cathedral, hospitals, schools, the main prison and whole neighborhoods. Officials feared hundreds of thousands may have perished but there was no firm count.Death was everywhere in Port-au-Prince. Bodies of tiny children were piled next to schools. Corpses of women lay on the street with stunned expressions frozen on their faces as flies began to gather. Bodies of men were covered with plastic tarps or cotton sheets.
President Rene Preval said he believes thousands were killed in Tuesday afternoon's magnitude-7.0 quake, and the scope of the destruction prompted other officials to give even higher estimates. Leading Sen. Youri Latortue told The Associated Press that 500,000 could be dead, although he acknowledged that nobody really knows.
Obviously the US military is going to play a significant role in relief efforts. Right now there's talk of sending the aircraft carrier USS Vinson and an amphibious assault ship to the island.
The biggest issue will be fresh water as well as a large fleet of helicopters to ferry supplies, especially to hard to reach areas.
Given that reports are that most if not all hospitals are destroyed, I wouldn't be surprised to see the DoD move in the hospital ship USNS Comfort.
Once chilling note...some early estimates are that upwards of 500,000 people may be dead. That would represent 5% of the population.
21 comments:
As if life there wasn't bad enough before the quake... As a 2004 tsunami survivor, I can picture the type of horror and confusion ensuing in Haiti right now. I give my deepest sympathies and condolences to the families affected by this tragic natural disaster.
2004 tsunami? Were you in Indonesia?
I was in Phuket, Thailand. I do my best to avoid travel to countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia for obvious reasons.
This is so awful. I spent about 6 weeks in Haiti 30 years ago. The Haitiens are just the nicest people and I don't know why things have always been so difficult for them. And now this. It wasn't just because of the poor construction either -- the palace, the cathedral, the Montana hotel were all big solid buildings. I can hardly believe the palace just pancaked like that. And the Montana was a 4-star tourist hotel with an incredible view of the city.
The hotel I stayed at, the Oloffson, came through it fine. It's a 19th century solid-mahogany place that looks like a big weddding cake but I partied through a Cat 3 hurricane in it and it's still standing today. Apparently all the guests slept out on the circular driveway last night and people kept coming by to make sure they were OK and not dead.
500,000 dead would be 25% of the population of Port au Prince. It's been built up hugely though haphazardly since I was there and I don't know what they are going to do now if most of that city is flattened. They will need every bit of help they can get.
Total
Were you on the beach when the tsunami happened? Did the water back way out before the waves came in? I was shocked that almost no one seemed to know what that meant. But on the videos the waves look big but fairly normal until they actually hit the beach and keep going. Most people must have been thinking, what the hell is this?
I didn't see the water levels before the waves. I'm in a hurry right now but I will write down my story later when I have a better opportunity to compose my thoughts.
Thanks. I'm interested in the ways people react to dangers, natural and man-made.
I SURE AS HELL HOPE NOBODY HERE IS A FAN OF PAT ROBERTSON (the younger one)WHO JUST SAID THAT THE HAITIANS ARE BEING PUNISHED BY GOD BECAUSE THEY MADE A PACT WITH THE DEVIL.
This, in case anyone wonders, is why some people think evangelists are a-holes. And, obviously, at least one of them is.
Silly stupid ass Pat Robertson. Everybody KNOWS only deep south neegra Blues guitar pickers make pacts with the devil and it HAS to be at the Crossroads at Midnight.
More like "interesting", in the Chinese sense of the word.
Robertson probably means the role of Voudoun in the Haitien revolution. Maybe he'd like to explain why the Catholic cathedral fell right down flat yesterday and the poor archbishop was under it.
I'll bet you Pat Robertson doesn't like Catholics either.
I googled it, and I find that Pat Robertson does not seem to hate Catholics. I was wrong about that.
This is the first time I have written about my experiences of the 2004 tsunami. I was staying at the Le Meridien Beach Resort in Phuket with my friend and parents and I had just arrived from Bangkok the day before, anticipating a relaxing ten day stay on a beautiful tropical island.
On the morning of December 26th, 2004 I felt a large earthquake at about 7:30am that shook up my room for what felt like a full minute. I had recently taken an oceanography class (and got an A in it too), yet I did not make the earthquake-tsunami connection and simply shrugged it off and went back to sleep. As RRA noted, the water levels did indeed recede, however, the locals had no idea that it was a telltale warning as Thailand never had a history of tsunamis. I woke up approximately an hour after the earthquake when I received a phone call from my parents telling me to look outside my balcony. I looked out the window and saw people running and screaming from a wall of water. This wall of water passed through about 200 feet of beachhead and over a 6 foot incline into a pond-sized pool (probably another 300 feet). One could still see people eating breakfast by the pool, apparently unaware that those on the beach were swept away and completely to what was going to happen. Once I realized that what occurred was a tsunami, I knew from oceanography classes that at least one more wave was coming. After the first wave, all of the power and electricity went out. About five minutes later, a second wall of water, bigger than the first, pounded the beach, this time sending the guests still at breakfast into a frenzied panic as the wave not only crossed the entire 300 foot pool but eventually made its way through the lobby and up to the second floor. The second wave took jet skis from the ocean and threw them into the pool. Once the wave made its way to the lobby, it swallowed the ornamental Christmas presents and spat them out into the massive, now fully opaque, salt water pool.
My friend and I packed up all of our belongings in a snap and met with my parents in their room to watch the events unfold. My parents told me that before the tsunami hit, they were about to head to the beach but were interrupted by a phone call that my dad received. A Swiss couple next door had no idea of what was going on and I attempted to explain to them the magnitude of the events that just happened. I did not know that hundreds of thousands died at the time, but I told them that people were undoubtedly killed on the beach and that they should stay on high ground for the time being. The second tsunami destroyed the hotel gas tanks and the noxious smell of gas was everywhere. My survival instincts kicked in and I started making quick and rash decisions without thinking them through. I decided that it was time to leave and get off of the island. My friend and I hauled four extremely heavy bags down five flights of stairs until we got to the front of the hotel, which was now surrounded by shallow water. My friend and I led my mom out to higher ground while my dad was still packing his luggage. I left the other luggage with my mom and ran back into the hotel to grab my dad. The remnants of the hotel staff refused to let me enter the hotel but I simply pushed them aside and made my way forward. I found my dad quickly approaching me and we rushed out of the hotel, anticipating a third or even fourth wave.
Once we left the hotel, we dragged luggage for about two miles uphill. Even though I was not in proper condition to drag four oversized and heavy bags of luggage (two in each hand), I kept marching uphill and not even once thought about the heat, humidity, and fatigue. We eventually found a taxi driver, who was clearly rattled, and he agreed to take us to the airport for $100. My dad and I were in agreement that if we did not try to leave the island that very day, we would likely be stranded for days, if not weeks, without power and basic necessities. We paid the driver his asking price and attempted to head to the airport. The driver could not take the normal roads as many of them were destroyed or flooded. As we were driving, I saw ambulances speeding everywhere and their sirens were deafening. We somehow made it to the airport but the remnants of security refused to let anybody pass. We managed to sneak by security and what we saw was a ghost town of an airport. The airport still had power as it was operating on a backup generator, but the experience was surreal. Luggage was everywhere, left in the airport by fleeing passengers as they checked in. Passenger lists remained at check-in desks, as if the moment was stuck in time. We sat at the airport for about nine hours and they miraculously resumed flights, which were horribly difficult to get on. I met a British couple at the airport who were shaking and completely traumatized. The husband said that he and his wife were riding bicycles when the tsunami hit, wiping out other children ahead of them. The wave dragged the couple into a stream of water and they were saved by Thai locals on a bridge who threw them a rope.
My father managed to get all of us aboard a flight back to Bangkok and we made it there late at night. It was the subsequent days that left a more profound effect on me. I’d read the newspaper everyday and saw the death toll rise like a rocket: 10/27 death toll around 1,000, 10/28 death toll around 10,000, 10/29, death toll estimated to be at one hundred thousand until the press finally reached the number of about 230,000 deaths. I traveled to Hong Kong before the new year and as I looked at massive neon light displays on gigantic buildings with messages like “Happy New Year” and “2005” all I thought about was how I could care less for the new year.
Here are pictures of the resort:
http://www.phuket.com/meridien/photos.htm
Since the photos are dated 2004, they were taken before the tsunami.
Total, were you in that hotel they show videos of where the wave comes up from the beach into the swimming pool sort of at the left of the frame? There's a small open sided restaurant to the right and some videos show people scrambling out of there just as the wave hits. It's amazing that those waves get so close before people realize they aren't normal. They seem to have the whole ocean behind them pushing them inland.
dennis prager carries a lot of weight with me. if he believes this charity is a good way to direct a donation for this catastrophe then it does with me too. I went to the link.
thanks for putting up the link pastorius.
Yeah, I respect Prager enormously as well, Rumcrook. I heard him touting this charity on the way home from the gym today, and immediately posted this when I walked through the door.
Total,
Would it be ok with you if I posted your story on the front page?
RRA: No, that was a different hotel, a lot of them look similar.
Pasto: You can post the story if you would like to.
Hold fast people of Haiti! May the worst be behind you as you begin to sort through the shattered pieces of your world. And may you turn to one another for comfort as you face the dark months and years of sorrow and loss ahead.
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