Aggies Helping Haitians
www.newsroom.redcross.org Go here for latest updates on earthquake in Haiti. It is my understanding that organizations need money in order to get the correct supplies. They will take clothes and food, but only the people on the ground there truly know what’s needed and money will help get those exact supplies. You can also text to donate $10.
If you have AT&T wireless service, you can text HAITI to 90999 to make a $10 dollar donation to the Red Cross. The $10 dollar donation is added to your wireless bill automatically to make it easy to contribute.
This is true for most carriers. I have Sprint and did the same thing today. What a great way to help!
Haitians mourning after earthquake
By JONATHAN M. KATZ
Associated Press
APPhoto
People gather outside Haiti’s National Palace which was damaged by an earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Wednesday.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Dazed survivors wandered past dead bodies in rubble-strewn streets Wednesday, crying for loved ones, and rescuers searched collapsed buildings as officials feared the death toll from Haiti’s devastating earthquake could reach into the tens of thousands.
The first cargo planes with food, water, medical supplies, shelter and sniffer dogs headed to the Western Hemis-phere’s poorest nation a day after the magnitude-7 quake flattened much of the capital of 2 million people.
Tuesday’s earthquake brought down buildings great and small — from shacks in shantytowns to President Rene Preval’s gleaming white National Palace, where a dome tilted ominously above the manicured grounds.
Hospitals, schools and the main prison collapsed. The capital’s Roman Catholic archbishop was killed when his office and the main cathedral fell. The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was missing in the ruins of the organization’s multistory headquarters.
At a triage center improvised in a hotel parking lot, people with cuts, broken bones and crushed ribs moaned under tent-like covers fashioned from bloody sheets.
“I can’t take it any more. My back hurts too much,” said Alex Georges, 28, who was still waiting for treatment a day after the school he was in collapsed and killed 11 classmates.
“This is much worse than a hurricane,” said doctors’ assistant Jimitre Coquillon. “There’s no water. There’s nothing. Thirsty people are going to die.”
Haiti’s leaders struggled to comprehend the extent of the catastrophe — the worst earthquake to hit the country in 200 years — even as aftershocks still reverberated.
“It’s incredible,” Preval told CNN. “A lot of houses destroyed, hospitals, schools, personal homes. A lot of people in the street dead. … I’m still looking to understand the magnitude of the event and how to manage.”
Preval said thousands of people were probably killed. Leading Sen. Youri Latortue told The Associated Press that 500,000 could be dead, but conceded that nobody really knows.
“Let’s say that it’s too early to give a number,” Preval said.
Looting began almost as quickly as the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. and people were seen carrying food from collapsed buildings.
Many lugged what they could salvage and stacked it around them as they slept in streets and parks.
People streamed into the Haitian countryside, where wooden and cinderblock shacks showed little sign of damage. Many balanced suitcases and other belongings on their heads. Ambulances and U.N. trucks raced in the opposite direction, toward Port-au-Prince.
About 3,000 police and international peacekeepers cleared debris, directed traffic and maintained security in the capital. But law enforcement was stretched thin even before the quake and would be ill-equipped to deal with major unrest.
An American aid worker was trapped for about 10 hours under the rubble of her mission house before she was rescued by her husband, who told CBS’ Early Show that he drove 100 miles to Port-au-Prince to find her. Frank Thorp said he dug for more than an hour to free his wife, Jillian, and a co-worker from under about a foot of concrete.
The international Red Cross said a third of the country’s 9 million people may need emergency aid, a burden that would test any nation and a crushing catastrophe for impoverished Haiti.
Haiti’s quake refugees likely will face an increased risk of dengue fever, malaria and measles — problems that plagued the impoverished country before, said Kimberley Shoaf, associate director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters.
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