Carl Hiaasen
Devastation in Haiti
(c) Paul Tong
After the terrible earthquake, a man named
Driscoll is a
Members of the rescue crew could hardly believe it, and there were tears. Driscoll and Blaze got written up in his hometown newspaper, the
Many stories about the tragedy in
The situation in
Officials still don't know how many people died in the earthquake, and they'll never know. The current estimates range from 50,000 to 200,000, but it's all grim guesswork. Nobody is keeping count of all the bodies being trucked to mass gravesites. Beneath the debris are thousands more, lost forever.
Those who survived are in dire peril. The healthy are desperate for food and water; the injured are desperate for medical care.
Despite the huge international relief effort, some clinics are operating at primitive levels. The
If the quake had struck a developed country, the destruction would have been crippling. But in a place of such wretched poverty as
Back here in the States, we all know friends and relatives who can't watch any more of it on television -- and not because they don't care. There's just too much misery to absorb. They feel sad and sickened and helpless to do anything. Diversions are plentiful and, some might argue, therapeutic. If you tuned in to other recent news, you would have learned that
And, apparently inspired by home-run slugger
None of this stuff is very important, but it definitely gives a brain some downtime. Those who are strong enough to stick with the
In the earthquake zone, heroes are abundant and tireless. Just as there's no way to count the dead, there's no way to know how many lives have been saved -- or will be saved, as long as the rest of the world remains riveted.
According to Partners in Health, which has provided medical care in
The very images that are so painful for us to watch are fueling an astounding flow of donations to the many relief agencies on the ground --
People on the outside passionately want to help, and giving money is the swiftest, most effective way. How long it continues at this extraordinary pace will depend on the media's fluttery attention span, and on the public's endurance for what will be an arduous rebuilding.
In a 24/7 news cycle, the coverage of every natural calamity, from hurricanes to tsunamis, reaches a saturation point at which a sort of cauterizing numbness sets in. Nothing would be worse for
To glance away from its horrors is understandable, but to lose interest would be ruinous.
Haiti - Sometimes the Earth is Cruel
Leonard Pitts Jr
That is ultimately the fundamental lesson here, as children wail, families sleep out of doors, and the dead lie unclaimed in the rubble that once was Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Haiti - Tragedy and Opportunity for Haiti
Kara C. McDonald
The January 12 earthquake that devastated Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is the first test of the Obama administration's ability to mount a full-scale international disaster response, and it is no ordinary test. Haiti is the poorest nation in the hemisphere, with abysmal infrastructure, struggling to stabilize
(C) 2010 Carl Hiaasen