Haiti: The View From Here

Everyone's seen the gruesome images on the news, and I guess I could try to get creative and come up with some string of awful words to describe the state and conditions of the city and its people, which would not suffice, so there's really only one way to describe it: fucked. It's completely, unbelievably fucked. The whole country is outdoors.

Every block — collapsed buildings, every street — refugees, every gas station crammed with people shouting and jockeying to fill up makeshift gas cans. And yes, the fallen bodies with faces covered with rags or cardboard, everywhere. It doesn't end.

It's day five, people are getting more and more desperate, and the vast scale of the tragedy is unimaginable: today, food was personally distributed to 200,000 people out of more than a million who have been affected and in need.

Phi Beta Iota: The best estimate available from published sources is that no more than one fifth of the population is getting water and food on any given day.  This would be a good time to re-visit air drops of water, food, plastic sheeting and cord as well as lumber–spreading the drops will spread the population and reduce density in the city.  IOHO.