Disaster Relief

I will not start by apologizing for another post on Haiti, but that is what it will be. For the past few days I have been trying to follow the disaster in Haiti and just fathom what it truly must be like. The destruction, the horror, the separation from normalcy, the despair from thinking no one cares. Why should this be?

I understand the destruction, not really a lot you can do about this when you live near a fault line, and the horror goes with the destruction. However, separation from normalcy and the despair these people must be feeling could and should of been taken care of within 48 hours.

The argument is that if food and supplies were to be air dropped in it would have caused a riot; well we now have witnessed 2 major disasters where waiting will cause riots. Any time you push people to a point they think it is every man for himself, they will do what is required to survive. Now would you please educate me on why a UN doctor would abandon his patient because of possible riots and literally walk away? If this is the UN, then they might as well join the Red Cross.  Though I have never heard of the Red Cross abandoning any survivor of a disaster.



Here is the meat of my dismay; it has taken 4 days now to get people and supplies to the island to help and yet very few are actually being helped, sound familiar. It is like watching Katrina unfold all over again. You can not tell me with our military might that this is reasonable. It is 600+ miles from Miami to Haiti which would take about 9 hours by car. Our military has radar that can pin point a single person in China, yet can not tell them what the roads are like in Haiti before they land. They have entire villages that can be air dropped and that deploy upon impact. Still it takes them 4 days to even touch Haitian soil. Oh, I forgot we can not deploy because there is no communication, between anyone. This brings me full circle to technology.

There have been a lot of technological advances between Katrina and now that have made this disaster a little more bearable. We now have more items that can be ran on solar power, we have the social networks for information, we have advancements in field medicine, we have advancements in almost every aspect of disaster relief and yet it takes us 4 days to get going. Wonder if the military even has a bull horn still? You definitely can communicate with one of those. Sometimes you just have to fall back and use common sense to solve the problem. I guess that is why the military has trouble; common sense is not their forte.

My final thought is this; if you live an area of the country or even the world where US forces may be your aid in a disaster, plan on 4 days as minimum of surviving on your own. This seems to be our response time for disasters.

I am including a link below to the American Red Cross, I know their track record; do what you can.

American Red Cross