Obviously, all quantitative measures of this ongoing tragedy are still preliminary at best and total guess as worst, but, for what it’s worth, a Haitian Red Cross official is estimating that 45,000-50,000 people died in the earthquake.
“No one knows with precision, no one can confirm a figure,” Victor Jackson, an assistant national coordinator with Haiti’s Red Cross, told Reuters news service when giving the estimated death toll. “We also think there are 3 million people affected throughout the country, either injured or homeless.”
President Obama has pledged an initial $100 million towards recovery efforts, which come in addition to the on-the-ground efforts that Washington is contributing, which Hillary Clinton spoke about on the Today Show this morning in the video below (via The Lede).
“We are doing all we can to can to figure out how to best attack the devastation all around. This is going to be a long-term effort. We have the immediate crisis of trying to save those lives that can be saved, to deal with the injured and the dead, to try to provide some food, water, medical supplies, some semblence of shelter. And then [we have] to work with our Haitian partners, the government of Haiti, NGOs, others to begin the rebuilding process.”
The Secretary’s added these thoughts on the communications challenge:
The President thankfully is safe — he has nowhere to live, his home was in the palace. He is working closely with those members of his government that can be located and communicated with. We have brought in communications systems to try to create some means for the government to function.
She also announced that the TEXT “HAITI” TO 90999 campaign has raised $3 million so far through the Red Cross and that anyone looking for information about loved ones who may have been affected by the disaster can call 1-888-407-4747 to contact the State Department Operations Center.
President Obama has made the unfortunate admission that aid will take “hours, and many cases, days” to actually get to those who need it, and NPR recounts the rest of the resources that the U.S. has made available.
President Obama promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort including military and civilian emergency teams from across the U.S. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was expected to arrive off the coast Thursday, and the Navy said the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan had been ordered to sail as soon as possible with a 2,000-member Marine unit. An advance group of more than 100 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division will leave Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Thursday to prepare for the arrival of several hundred more from the division on Friday.
More details on the military’s contributions from the Miami Herald:
The Pentagon’s Southern Command dispatched a 30-member assessment team to work out of the U.S. Embassy, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson toward the coast, a reconnaissance plane to survey the damage and Coast Guard aircraft to evacuate some of the 45,000 Americans in Haiti.
Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, the Southcom chief, also said the Pentagon might deploy an amphibious Navy ship with a Marine expeditionary unit and possibly thousands of soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division. They could help distribute relief supplies and keep the peace.
The rest of the world is doing as much as it can as well.
The global relief effort did pick up steam Thursday with the arrival of an Air China flight carrying search-and-rescue teams, medics, trained search dogs and aid supplies. A British flight with a government assessment team and 71 rescue specialists along with heavy equipment arrived in the neighboring Dominican Republic. The crew prepared to head to Haiti. A Los Angeles County Fire Department 72-member search team left for the Caribbean island nation late Wednesday.
The United Nations released $10 million from its emergency funds, even as U.N. forces in Haiti struggled with their own losses. The U.N. headquarters building collapsed in Port-au-Prince, and at least 16 personnel are confirmed dead, with up to 150 still missing, including mission director Hedi Annabi of Tunisia and his chief deputy, Luis Carlos da Costa.
“We’ll be using whatever roads are passable to get aid to Port-au-Prince, and if possible we’ll bring helicopters in,” said Emilia Casella, a spokeswoman for the U.N. food agency in Geneva.The global relief effort did pick up steam Thursday with the arrival of an Air China flight carrying search-and-rescue teams, medics, trained search dogs and aid supplies. A British flight with a government assessment team and 71 rescue specialists along with heavy equipment arrived in the neighboring Dominican Republic. The crew prepared to head to Haiti. A Los Angeles County Fire Department 72-member search team left for the Caribbean island nation late Wednesday.
As most in the disaster recovery business know, we are now moving past the 36-hour mark, beyond which a lot of noble rescue efforts start to prove ineffectual. The next 12-24 hours will be vital in trying to rescue as many survivors as possible and getting people the basic water, food, medical care and shelter they need.
You can see more on the unimaginable difficulties that the authorities are facing in the (graphic) video below. (via CNN.com)
Godspeed.
Bill Clinton has also articulated exactly “What Haiti Needs” in a piece he wrote for Time.
We need to get as much equipment as we can into Haiti. The military is sending in helicopters, and there will probably be a need for it to supply some logistics and communications support. The U.S. is going to have to carry a lot of the load there early on. But it’s very important that the U.S., which is so pivotal to this emergency period, work very closely with the U.N. peacekeeping mission stationed in Haiti, which is very well organized and is operating well. In fact, the U.N. system has already swung into action: it has offered $10 million in immediate emergency relief and organized food relief through the World Food Programme. There are hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be coming out of there alive that have to be cared for; the World Health Organization is trying to meet the health care needs.
The international relief effort that followed the Asian tsunami of 2004 offers some lessons that can be applied in Haiti. First of all, there has to be national buy-in by the U.S. There has to be a national vision, and I think we have that. Secondly, coordination is really important both within the U.N. and among all the donor countries and nongovernmental groups. There are 10,000 nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti, the highest number per capita in the world except for India. We’ve got to all work together toward a common goal. We have to relentlessly focus on trying to build a model that will be sustainable, so we don’t plant a bunch of trees and then revert to deforestation, or adopt a program to bring power to the country that can’t be sustained, or adopt an economic strategy that is going to wither away in two years.
I’m trying now to get organized to make sure not only that we get the emergency aid that Haiti needs but also that donors come through on their pre-existing commitments. We need to keep the private sector involved. Once we deal with the immediate crisis, the development plans the world was already pursuing have to be implemented more quickly and on a broader scale. I’m interested in just pressing ahead with it.
Thankfully, he also offers something we can all use right now: Hope.
Haiti isn’t doomed. Let’s not forget, the damage from the earthquake is largely concentrated in the Port-au-Prince area. That has meant a tragic loss of life, but it also means there are opportunities to rebuild in other parts of the island. So all the development projects, the agriculture, the reforestation, the tourism, the airport that needs to be built in the northern part of Haiti — everything else should stay on schedule. Then we should simply redouble our efforts once the emergency passes to do the right sort of construction in Port-au-Prince and use it to continue to build back better.
Before this disaster, Haiti had the best chance in my lifetime to fulfill its potential as a country, to basically escape the chains of the past 200 years. I still believe that if we rally around them now and support them in the right way, the Haitian people can reclaim their destiny.