Although very unlikely because of our building codes in California, still, it got me to thinking--even if I spread stuff around between where I live, work, my car--what if all of them were stuck under a few tons of concrete rubble like so many of the buildings in Port Au Prince? In other words, even a preparedness-minded Haitian could still have ended up with nothing. Even burying a cache in the ground wouldn't help if a hillside denuded of all vegetation slid down and buried it.

Did anyone see that video of some mine or other excavation site? You see the first couple feet of a big dump truck sticking out of this huge wall of light colored dirt that towers over the truck. Apparently there are two more dump trucks and their drivers under that huge pile. A lone guy in a loader is scooping out dirt, but you get the uneasy sense that the wall of dirt is simply going to come crashing down on the loader as soon as he digs away enough dirt from the bottom or a big enough aftershock hits...