Life outside the bubble: Haiti is not Katrina. It’s much worse.

My second post of the year, a slow start. I find myself riveted to the news channels as this story of devastation unfolds. I've started to learn more about Haiti, and initially I made the same mistake that I hear a lot of people making, comparing Haiti to Katrina. Not even in the same league.


More Photos - Time | Red Cross | CNN | Huffington Post 

Country & Population

• Population a little over 9 million.
• Nearly 40 percent of the country's population is under the age of 14.
• Haiti ranks as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of its people living below the poverty line and 54 percent existing in abject poverty.
• Most Haitians live on less than $2 a day.
• Haiti has one of the world's lowest life expectancy rates (181st out of 190 countries ranked by the CIA World Factsheet). The average Haitian lives only 60 years.
• Eighty percent of the country is Roman Catholic and 16 percent is Protestant; nearly half the population also practices voodoo.
• Approximately half of Haiti's population cannot read or write.
• The Haiti telecommunications infrastructure is among the least developed in Latin America and the Caribbean.
  

Earthquake Impact

• 3.5 million people affected by earthquake.
• Affected approximately one-third of the population of the entire country.
• The facilities that could have assisted victims, such as hospitals, clinics and the UN headquarters for the nation, were destroyed or are not operational.
• Per Haiti officials, 100,000 – 200,000 feared dead. The Red Cross says 45,000 to 50,000 people have died. The Pan American Health Organization puts the number between 50,000 and 100,000.
• Only 1/2 of police force on the street.
• Aftershocks still occurring.
• Dead and decomposing on streets and in tumbled buildings.
• Among the largest catastrophes ever experienced in the Western Hemisphere.
• USGS called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti.
  

Earthquake Support (selected examples)

• U.S. troops handed out about 2,500 meals Saturday in Port-au-Prince suburb.
• 4,200 U.S. military personnel currently supporting operations, 6,300 scheduled by Monday.
• The U.N. World Food Programme said it plans to reach 2 million people "with one-week rations of ready-to-eat food."
• President Obama pledged $100 million, and the Red Cross $10 million.
• The U.K. offered $10 million from its Department of International Development.
• The World Bank extended $100 million in emergency aid.
• Americans have given more than $11 million via a text message donation service.
• More>
  

Need I say it? Please help. You should have done so by now, but if for some reason you haven't, donate...

World Vision  |  Samaritan's Purse  |  Red Cross  |  Unicef  |  Yele Haiti

Sources

Photos - Time | Red Cross | CNN | Huffington Post 

Haiti is not Katrina [CNN] - To get an idea of the distinction between the two events, imagine that all of the U.S. west of the Mississippi were to be destroyed or extensively damaged by some immense catastrophe in one minute, with absolutely no warning. That is the situation Haiti faces.

Dirt Poor [National Geographic] - Haiti has lost its soil and the means to feed itself.

World Factbook [CIA] - Geography, People, Government, Economy, Communications...

Hunger Facts [World Food Programme] - Poverty, malnutrition, high food prices, hurricanes and now an earthquake. Here are ten facts that give the measure of the hunger crisis facing Haiti, an nation which was already struggling to feed itself even before the earthquake.

Haitian Facts & Figures [CBC] - Haiti occupies the western one-third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republican occupying the east. Though rich in history, French-speaking Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, hampering its ability to recover from natural disasters. The numbers tell a story.

Haiti Earthquake Death Toll: The Devastation in Numbers [Huffington Post] - The numbers behind the outpouring of earthquake assistance are giant. But they are dwarfed by the statistics indicating the scope of the disaster in Haiti, the number of victims and their deep poverty.

Comments

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There are three main types of fault that may cause an earthquake: normal, reverse(thrust) and strike-slip. Normal and reverse faulting are examples of dip-slip, where the displacement along the fault is in the direction of dip and movement on them involves a vertical component. Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is being extended such as a divergent boundary. Reverse faults occur in areas where the crust is being shortened such as at a convergent boundary. Strike-slip faults are steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip horizontally past each other ; transform boundaries are a particular type of strike-slip fault. Many earthquakes are caused by movement on faults that have components of both dip-slip and strike-slip; this is known as oblique slip.