in this situation. It would have been better if the Haitian government would have stood up immediately after the earthquake. They should have took over the airport sooner and they should have been dropping food and water into the refugees areas days ago.

VOA NEWS - U.S. officials say a trickle of international aid is beginning to reach survivors of Haiti's massive earthquake, but impassable roads, limited airlift capability and other challenges are complicating that effort. As anger and restlessness escalate in the Hatian capital, Port-au-Prince, there were some signs of hope amid the destruction as rescue workers dug through crumbled buildings, and in some instances, freed trapped survivors.

anything that happens is too little, it's a clusterfuck, the devastation is too huge: for every win, there's too much human failure that cannot be altered due to an almost total inability to change the reality of a disaster that has to be accepted as this is what the earth can do to humanity

Posted on Sun, Jan. 17, 2010

Jacqueline Charles, Trenton Daneil and Frances Robles | Miami Herald

last updated: January 18, 2010 12:19:56 AM

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Medical assistance, search and rescue teams, fresh water and food began reaching more Haitians on Sunday as logistics improved at the airport and international groups coordinated relief efforts.

Even as the likelihood of finding survivors grew slimmer, search and rescue teams from Israel, Turkey, the United States and elsewhere continued working around the clock. A total of 62 people, most of them Haitian citizens, have been rescued since the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, White House officials said Sunday afternoon.

Three people were rescued from the Caribbean Market early Sunday as rescue teams searched for more survivors at eight other locations, Tim Callaghan, senior adviser for USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, said on a telephone news conference.

Callaghan said time was running out to find survivors, but that the Haitian government would signal when the rescue phase of operations would end.

"The further away we get from the event,'' he said, ``the more difficult and challenging it is to find people alive.''

One rescue on Sunday took place at the collapsed U.N. mission headquarters in the capital, where rescuers freed a Danish worker from the rubble about 15 minutes after an emotional visit from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

``I am here with a message of hope that help is on the way,'' Moon told a group of men and boys shouting that they needed food, water and work, the Associated Press reported.

Ban said the U.N. is feeding 40,000 people, and expects that figure to rise to 2 million within a month.

He called the quake ``one of the most serious humanitarian crises in decades.''

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive confirmed on Sunday that a crew of 60 government trucks had collected 70,000 dead for mass burial, though the figure includes only bodies collected in Port-au-Prince and nearby Leogane. There is no official count for deaths in Jacmel, a city on the southeastern coast.

The U.S. State Department confirmed on Sunday that 16 Americans died in the Haiti quake. An estimated 2,000 Americans have been evacuated.

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The UN was still there to provide security before the earthquake, so doubt if Haitian govt had it together enough to keep the airport going. They "gave" it to the US forces, who then proceeded to use it with priority for themselves. Bill Clinton (in his UN role) outlined a plan to free up the main road links days ago. Who knows what squabbling over authority then occurred.

Two security issue links:

CENTCOM (US Defense Dept. Security Role in Haiti to Gain Prominence, Keen Says

Al-Jazeera Americas Blog : Who Will Lead Haiti's Security ?

_{The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory}

Haiti disaster 'like no other' ~ three major constraints - transport, communications and fuel

$10 bucks for the Red Cross in Haiti

Haiti Earthquake caught on Tape - real time

Hospital collapses, panic in the streets, as powerful quake rocks Haiti

_{The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory}

It could take 10 years to rebuild Haiti

_{The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory}

Arrogance and incompetence. Remember them? America was neck deep in both during the BushCo empire days, and today in Haiti it's showing its ugly face again. Rather than working alongside countries that are trying to help, the US military has presumed that it will be in charge of everything, a stance guaranteed to create the angry clusterfuck we see today.

We are a member of the international community, not its ruler. Write that on the black board 100 times, Barack Obama. Same with all your stupid, arrogant generals.
.
Cows get milked, rubes get bilked,
And fat cats dine on fools and cream.

"O hai, u had an earthquake. Plz let us have yr central bank now. We will be skimming the skrilla outta all-a dat." -- Bill Clinton

CLINTBUSH: WE'RE STEALING HAITI'S 'KATRINA' CASH- HAITI ACTIVATED AS HUB FOR FINANCIAL SCAMMING CONTINUUM. JPD should probably not click on that link cause I know that site annoys him :) These people are experts at stealing money, on the other hand it also has the first bit I've seen saying it was a false flag earthquake! (which can't really be that hard to make I suppose - someone's gotta be able to do geo-engineering in a fault area)

Or if that's too much then just try ol Felix: Don't give money to Haiti. The Yele charity is questionable. Its paperwork seems to usually be missing.

I want to know how much the cell carriers get to skim off those payments if you pay thru cellphone.
--
Hongpong.com

I was into earthquakes-as-weapons idea since I was little and watched PBS Square One, there was a story arc on Mathnet (the Dragnet spoof) wherein a secret earthquake machine was freaking out Los Angeles. It was just this thing that spun around. Mathnet was awesome.

I guess it's weird he sees Toeffler is his source hehehe :)
http://web.archive.org/web/20010913013933/http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr1997/t042897_t0428coh.html
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen
Monday, April 28, 1997 – 8:45 a.m. EDT
Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week’s scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B’nai Brith.

A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we’ve learned in the intelligence community, we had something called — and we have James Woolsey here to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.

So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It’s real, and that’s the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that’s why this is so important.
Via here
--
Hongpong.com

Scientists predict a Haiti-magnitude earthquake along the New Madrid fault during the next 50 years. The fault runs under the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest parts of the US.

By Suzi Parker Correspondent
posted January 17, 2010 at 2:37 pm EST
Little Rock, Ark. —

One of the strongest series of earthquakes ever to hit the United States happened not in Alaska or along California's San Andreas fault, but in southeast Missouri along the Mississippi River.

In 1811 and 1812, the New Madrid fault zone that zig zags through five states shook so violently that it shifted furniture in Washington, D.C., and rang church bells in Boston. The series of temblors changed the course of the Mississippi River near Memphis, and historical accounts claim the river even flowed backward briefly.

Geologists consider the New Madrid fault line a major seismic zone and predict that an earthquake roughly the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake (7.0 on the Richter scale) could occur in the area during the next 50 years.

That forecast is of particular concern because the New Madrid zone sits beneath one of the country’s most economically distressed areas – the Delta. In many counties in the Mississippi Delta, the poverty level is triple the national average.

Moreover, the area is comparatively less prepared to deal with a huge earthquake than are other seismically active areas in the US, says Mark Ghilarducci, vice president of James Lee Witt Associates, a crisis and emergency management consulting company in Washington.

“There have not been enough resources applied for retrofitting that there could be,” Mr. Ghilarducci says. “I would like to see far more retrofit programs, strengthening of buildings, especially masonry buildings, tying down bridges. That builds resiliency in a community.”
Efforts to prepare

Neither the federal government nor local governments are unaware of the threat.

Numerous interstate task forces and coalitions have organized over the last decade to prepare for a castrophoric earthquake. Education programs focused on survival kits and family disaster planning occur yearly in states. Yet, experts say, few families have kits in their homes.

Last November, the Obama administration’s Long Term Disaster Recovery Working Group held five stakeholder meetings around the country, including Memphis. They solicited input on how “to improve long-term disaster recovery with a particular focus on catastrophic disasters.”

The meetings were co-chaired by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

The New Madrid fault zone crosses five state lines and the Mississippi River in at least three places. It extends from northeast Arkansas through southeast Missouri and into western Tennessee, western Kentucky, and southern Illinois.

In the 1800s, few people lived in the region. Today, it is densely populated and includes Memphis and St. Louis.

“All the faults are active,” says Haydar Al-Shukri, director of Arkansas Earthquake Center. “We would see an earthquake 10 times larger than the Haitian earthquake or even those in California because of the amount of distance the seismic waves of the earthquake would travel.”

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WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A magnitude 6.1 aftershock jolted Haiti on Wednesday, eight days after a stronger earthquake devastated the Caribbean country, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties from Wednesday's quake, which the USGS said occurred at 1103 GMT and was centered 26 miles (42 km) west-northwest of Jacmel. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham)

latimes.com

Haiti's president, Rene Preval, speaks a week after quake
Looking shaken and offering little in the way of reassurance to Haitians, he says little before going back inside his makeshift office.

By Tracy Wilkinson

January 20, 2010

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

Seated under a mango tree with helicopters and cargo planes thundering overhead, Haitian President Rene Preval had few answers to the many questions facing the head of a devastated country. He could not say how many people had died. He did not know when the roads would be cleared of debris. He wouldn't venture a guess on whether more survivors might still be pulled from the rubble.

"We haven't ended the rescue operations, but we know that as the days pass, the chances are getting smaller and smaller," the president told The Times, speaking after a news conference held at what serves as his government's headquarters: a guarded police station behind cinder-block walls near the airport.

Preval spoke in the police station's car park. He looked shaken and did little to offer forceful reassurances to Haitians. Asked repeatedly about security, he said the police were acting in "extremely difficult conditions."

He called on the Haitian people to "organize themselves" to maintain order.

The quake destroyed every major government building, including the National Palace, the Supreme Court and ministries. Preval told of telephoning government office after government office last Tuesday after the quake, then calling U.N. headquarters -- all without answer. He then got on a motorcycle to survey the wasteland.

But he had since been largely invisible to his countrymen. His news conference was held exactly a week after the quake. When it ended, Preval turned to head back to his office in the police station. He was confronted by a woman in red.

"Mr. President! Mr. President!" she shouted. "People are dying. We have no water.

"The mayor has everything and he doesn't want to give it up!" she said. "Please, please, please, just a bag of rice."

"OK, a bag of rice," Preval said. Then he went inside.