The mainstream media is playing the usual game of "If it bleeds, it leads," giving us saturation coverage of individual and group suffering and threats of more suffering.
- Dozens of search and rescue "miracles"
- 100,000 or more dead
- 2-3 million without food, water, shelter, health care
- Threats of infection, gangrene
- Corpses littering the streets
- Mass graves, mass cremation of bodies
- Violence?
But the MSM is not telling us the real story about the damage and about what must be done to fix it, and to fix what keeps Haiti the poorest country in the Caribbean. For that you have to dig, and not just in the rubble.
Here is a summary of damage, needs, and current relief, as concisely as I can, with links to more. I will follow up with longer-term needs (much more on rebuilding; the need for national PTSD treatment; aid for amputees, orphans, and others; keeping the kleptocrats at bay; and especially education) after the immediate emergency is over. There are organizations working on these longer-term issues now, notably rebuilding of infrastructure such as electricity, water, communications, ports; government, utility, health care, education, and other facilities; and the city as a whole. There are plans to follow up with measures intended to lift Haiti out of its dismal poverty and degradation, plans which were in place and functioning for the last several years, and showing signs of promise, but are now largely on hold.
- Government and security: Government of Haiti (GoH) authorities, extremely limited capability and communication, gradually coming back together. Many workers and officials killed or injured, and survivors without communications and other normal facilities. Most public buildings damaged or destroyed, including Presidential Palace, offices, Cathedral, police and fire stations, utilities, communications. Bodies buried in mass graves or cremated en masse. Security provided by UN peacekeepers, US military, and some others. Violence and looting rare for several days, but starting to increase on sixth day until curfew imposed, 7 pm to dawn.
- Outside Port-au-Prince: The area around Port-au-Prince has similar damage and fewer facilities than Port-au-Prince itself. Many survivors are traveling to other parts of Haiti, and GoH is encouraging those cities to provide support.
- Communications: Many broadcast and mobile phone towers down, phone lines cut, studios and switching centers damaged or destroyed. Ham radio extremely limited and dicey due to violence..
- Port: Most facilities, including quays, warehouses, cranes, pipelines, storage tanks and yards, damaged or destroyed, and the waters filled with tumbled containers and debris. In particular, no way to offload fuel from tankers, leading to a critical shortage of diesel fuel for transportation and emergency generators. A few specialized ships are coming in that can offload containers without a crane on the shore (roll-on, roll-off). US Coast Guard and Navy mapping obstacles in port in preparation for salvage and clearing. Two US aircraft carriers (USS Carl Vinson, USS Bunker Hill) and a hospital ship (USS Comfort) have arrived and are functioning. Helicopters used for most critical transportation.
- Airport: Functioning, but without a control tower and without adequate transport from the airport to the city. US FAA personnel are reported to be directing flights from a folding table by the main runway. Many flights have to be redirected to the Dominican Republic for overland transport of critical items, or turned back.
- Health care: Many hospitals destroyed, and of those standing, some without electricity and water. Partners in Health, largest health care service in rural Haiti, is now the leading caregiver in Port-au-Prince. Emergency inflatable hospital buildings deployed, equipped and staffed, more emergency hospitals en route. Critical shortages of surgical teams, including anesthesia and nursing; equipment and supplies, including anesthetics, pain-killers, antibiotics. No cholera or other disease outbreaks. Large numbers of amputations of crushed, broken, and otherwise damaged limbs. Some cases airlifted to US when local treatment is impossible, such as crushed pelvis or skull fracture. Five UN medical kits delivered, good for 10,000 people each for several months, or several million people for a few days each. Large numbers of portable latrines being delivered and deployed.
- Electricity: Mostly down, time to repair unknown.
- Water: After five days, portable water purification plants have arrived, and shipments of bottled water are approaching the scale of minimum need, several hundred thousand liters daily. Distribution hindered by lack of fuel for available tank trucks. Regular water system will take two to three months to repair fully, currently supplying a million gallons daily in Port-au-Prince, with shortages outside the city.
- Food: Shops and storage destroyed, no transportation at first. Confusion about quality of food donations marked with packing date, interpreted as use by date. Quantities still inadequate, only 200,000 people fed through aid. Ten million meals en route from UN World Food Program.
- Search and rescue: First to arrive and deploy. Several dozen found alive under rubble after as long as five days. More to come.
- Shelter: More than a million, possibly two million people living in streets due to damaged dwellings. 20,000 tents requested. No sewage treatment, few sanitary facilities for homeless. Residents of one orphanage airlifted to US.
- Dominican Republic: There is a difficult road over the mountains from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to Port-au-Prince in Haiti. At few days after relief convoys can leave Santo Domingo daily they will start arriving in Port-au-Prince daily.
- Transport: Shortage of trucks, much greater shortage of fuel.
- Earth-moving equipment: Great shortage.
- Banks: Reopening today or tomorrow.
- Jobs for food: Announced by GoH.
Needs
- Please do not attempt to go to Haiti without coordinating with authorities and a sponsoring agency or NGO, except immediate family and friends of victims.
- Random material donations hinder more than they help. Contact agencies or NGOs about volume contributions of essentials such as medical supplies or equipment. Otherwise, please send money to one of the organizations listed at ReliefWeb (below). The people who know what is most needed also know where to buy it and how to ship it.
- Medical supplies
- Food
- Trucks
- Earth-moving equipment
- Large tents as for refugee camps
- Communications towers
- Fuel
- Portable buildings
- Emergency generators
Where to learn more:
Please let me know what I have missed, and add it to the Crisis Commons Wiki.
Disclosure: I was localization administrator for Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole) for One Laptop Per Child for a time, although I don't speak the language. I just recruited those who did, and set them up to do it. Sometime I must tell you about what they are doing in Haitian schools.