A massive earthquake struck Haiti just before 5 p.m. on January 12, about 10 miles south-west of Port-Au-Prince, which is the country's capital. It was the worst earthquake in the area for around 200 years. This earthquake was a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, and this earthquake devastated the country, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and leaving even more people homeless. The only earthquake that was almost as powerful as this one happened in 1984, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake.
The newly appointed head of the United Nations operations in Haiti, has remarked that the number of casualties cannot be determined, because people are burying bodies themselves, and many just throw the body into the dumps outside the city, and an untold number still lie under the rubble.
The after-effects of this earthquake was much worse than the Si Chuan earthquake, although the magnitude of the Si Chuan earthquake was greater than the Haiti earthquake. This is because of one substantial fact, that Haiti can be considered a third-world country.
Besides the US, many Aid agencies have tried to help out at Haiti, but there is another problem: The Haiti airport was destroyed in the disaster, and only one runway is available for aicrafts. In other words, the agencies' helicopters and aircrafts could not find a place to land. This reduced the Aid received by Haiti significantly.
Haiti faces another crisis: Leadership problems. According to what I read in an article about this earthquake, many millions of dollars have been injected to assist Haiti, but these investors only find the government too weak to use it, to harness it.
The White House is encouraging donations to the international fund of the Red Cross to support relief efforts in Haiti. This was what I read from another article:
You can text 'Haiti' to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross. This bill will be added to the donor's cell phone bill. There are other similar organizations, so if you want to play a part in saving Haiti, this is one thing you can do for them.
1 comments:
I feel that Haiti is really a country riddled with misfortune. This earthquake may be its biggest natural disaster yet, but its definitely not the only one. It has been hit by floods, earthquakes and hurricanes in its history. Being a third-world country as you have stated in your post, it is also very poor and corrupted. Many of its people were suffering a lot before the earthquake, so the disaster has torn apart their already ruined lives. Because of this, it would be very hard for Haiti to pick itself up and recover from this traumatizing experience. That is why all the more, we should put our efforts into helping Haiti recover.
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