You won't find any country willing to take such a large number of refugees. It's unfortunate, but history shows it's a very bad idea.

It's also a lot of people to move with no pre-existing infrastructure.

I wonder how many water wells and natural water reserves were damaged by the earthquake. Can aquifers be dramatically affected by earthquakes? My question is, what happens if there's not enough fresh water in Haiti?

Temporarily ... I'm sure they probably do have a water problem. It would help them a lot if some organization would go down there and dig some fresh wells.

The third world is very harsh. Remember that in Haiti you can find people eating dirt. Literally. They make small pies from mud, dry them in the sun, and sell them as food. It makes no sense nutritionally - people are just desperately hungry and will eat anything. I've seen similar things in the ghetto's in Africa. People will sell rocks (actually small stones) as food in the ghetto markets. The stones are also eaten by people who are desperately hungry - esp. pregnant women. I suppose the rocks act as a "space filler" in their stomachs.

other Pete

Teslinhiker - please see my comments on the other thread in the Survival forum. The title of the thread is something like "PSK for rescue operations". Especially, see my comments at the end of the thread about sources of clean drinking water. You need to give some serious thought to what I said there.
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On a separate subject - THREE CHEERS to the country of Israel and the group of Israeli's who responded to the Haiti disaster very quickly. It sounds very much like the Israeli's were one of the first effective response teams on the scene. No doubt the conditions they encountered were extremely ugly. That was an outstanding job by them!!! I hope someone from that group will come and post some firsthand observations on this forum.

other Pete

I am about to sound real negative here.

Haiti was at best a third world nation. It lacked proper sanitation and clean water; couldn't feed itself, police itself, maintain roads, or provide adequate medical care; the standing government was a joke and totally corrupt. I DO NOT blame the people of Haiti for this, I blame the government.

After the earthquake's devastation other governments are now going in to attempt to rebuild. Or more precisely build, as the things the relief efforts are trying to establish were pretty much lacking in the beginning.

Sending the Hatian people somewhere else won't help much. Imagine you have nothing, then are sent away from familiar surrounding, separated from what family you do have left, and end up in a country where you don't know the customs or language.

Most relief efforts try and bring the country affected to a status quo ante, where they were before. In this case, doing that is absurd. Why expend energy, time and money to build a turdhole? This relief effort is going to take a long long time, and cost even more money. I can only hope the final effect is something better than what was there originally.

Maybe a bit more optimistic note: Haiti is an extremely poor country. The extent of the devasation in Port au Prince is so severe, that there is the opportunity to rebuild areas to a new standard, including sanitation, water and water treatment. Building to code requires establishing a building code - building codes for extremely poor countries either don't exist, or exist but are easily built around, resulting in new devastation in the next hurricane (frequent), or earthquake (more rare, but uppermost on their minds). That's a difficult policy decision. But when they build, they can do better for themselves, and a big part of development aid should be providing training to Haitians in building to code, whatever they settle on. And historically, you can't ignore the corruption that funnels off funds for private benefit instead of putting them into public works projects.

This effort at rebuilding and improving the lot of the people of Haiti already goes on - alot of private charities and NGOs already build for long term survival and improving the lot of Haitian communities. See this one by a local church, going on as we speak 160 miles north of the area of devastation - http://upcconvergence.wordpress.com/. Its an effort constructed one foundation and one project at a time. Progress is slow, but it is noticeable. To reconstruct Port au Prince with anything other than a repeat of favelas and poverty exposing its citizens to the next disaster, it will require a plan that attempts something more than what they had, and a whole lotta effort to stick to it.

This is a haunting quote. Don't know if it's a fair observation, but it certainly is memorable:

"People are scared of the poor."


http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/index.html


Security concerns cause doctors to leave hospital, quake victims

January 16, 2010 6:33 p.m. EST

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Earthquake victims, writhing in pain and grasping at life, watched doctors and nurses walk away from a field hospital Friday night after a Belgian medical team evacuated the area, saying it was concerned about security.

The decision left CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta as the only doctor at the hospital to get the patients through the night.

...Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who led relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the evacuation of the clinic's medical staff was unforgivable.

"Search and rescue must trump security," Honoré said. "I've never seen anything like this before in my life. They need to man up and get back in there."

But it sure beats dying from a simple infection, a communicable disease such as Typhus, Cholera or dysentery, slow starvation or dehydration or even shot to death by the folks who have come to Haiti on a humanitarian mission or sliced open by a machette because your neighbour wants to eat your children especially if you've survived after your concrete house fell down around you and your family.

Haiti has no building code. I assume this means no inspectors, no habitability standards, etc.

Western-style codes add a lot of cost to a project and I wonder how much can be done _cheaply_ for earthquakes in Haiti. Note that even those with the money to build correctly didn't do so. Also, this earthquake is getting all of the attention now but over time hurricanes cause larger loss, and this is prime hurricane territory.

(it might be better to start with codes aimed at hurricanes since some effectiveness can be had cheaply, and then work up to more significant standards as the Haitians can afford it)

Any effort to add building codes will run into the inspection problem. An inspection system has to be created from scratch, kept honest, and kept alive once honest...

I was watching that live Friday night and it was a tough situation to watch unfold. I tip my hat to Sanjay Gupta for staying and keeping all the patients alive till morning, but it was a tough situation for the Belgians, too. Sanjay has his own security detail, and the Belgian team chief was told that their UN security was being pulled back for the night. Despite pleas from the team chief, the UN was not willing to provide any security overnight but did offer them the option to return with the peacekeepers, and that's what he finally decided to do.

That same night, I heard that some of the SAR teams were also suspending operations overnight because of security concerns. I remember one Russian SAR team being mentioned specifically. So this medical team was not the only group to be concerned with their safety. And I imagine that these folks are not novices about operating in conditions somewhat like this, so I think it's overly simplistic for anyone to broadly say that they are just "scared of poor people" or "scared of black people" or some generalization like that.

I kind of agree with Gen. Honore's sentiment, but at the same time, I'm not there on the ground with these people and don't know what they're going through. If these medical staffers were harmed, that would have had a chilling effect, I would imagine, throughout the entire relief operation by all parties. One could reasonably argue that "Better safe than sorry" is better than a devil may care attitude. Let's not forget that the relief operations is motived by goodwill from the international community. Sour that goodwill and international enthusiasm and resolve could dry up in an instant.

I haven't heard of any reports of anything similar happening Saturday night.