Haiti earthquake

3 million of whom live in Port-au-Prince itself. Originally designed to be a city of about 50,000, and had a population of about 250,000 in the 1950s.

Not only has the country grown way beyond its means, it has done so in about the most irresponsible manner possible, massively deforesting the surrounding hills, which just sets up the potential for landslides.

 

Which is why Jeanne, even though just a tropical depression at that point, killed thousands in 2004 with heavy rains that caused massive landslides. And who knows how many actually died from the four tropical systems that affected Haiti in 2008? Official total is 331, but you'd figure it's a lot higher.

 

I know this won't be proposed because it makes too much sense, but they probably should begin removing all people from at least the Port au-Prince area and shipping them somewhere else. Whether that's the DR or Cuba or here...I think somebody is going to have to step up to the plate.

 

You're underestimating the logistics of this. Even if you limit it to the capital area, that's still, by conservative estimates, 3 million people. Figure that very few people there have the means to evacuate themselves, a way lower percentage than New Orleans. I don't know a whole lot about the Dominican Republic, except as it relates to baseball and hurricanes, but do they have the infrastructure to add millions of refugees? Even hundreds of thousands? Does Cuba? It's not quite as simple as busing people to Houston or Memphis.

 

From a blog being quoted on the front page of CNN.com:

http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/

 

No it's not. Maybe you have to have different countries from around the world step up, but I honestly can't see anyone being able to live there until a massive restructuring takes place. Thing is these people are going to try to flee anyway when hunger, thirst and illness grab hold. When boats filled to the brim with people start showing up off the coast of Miami in large numbers are we really going to send them back?

 

Point is, I don't think you can just up an announce a massive evacuation this soon. Anything like this is going to take coordination between the UN and pretty much every country in a 500-mile radius of Haiti.

Which is the other thing: The way Haiti is described now and has been described before, it's almost a teardown at this point. Is it even sustainable as a country as it is now? Would it be up to code even if you fixed everything, or would it just be 50 tons of band-aids? You'd almost need a UN takeover at this point. And regreening the mountains will take forever.

Before you can get them out, you have to at least have a little idea of where they're going and how long they're going to be there. From the looks of things, the answer to the latter is "a hell of a long time"

 

It will never happen, but Haiti is so fucked up, it almost needs to be re-colonized.

 

The DR may look good when compared with Haiti, but it's no paradise, I wouldn't have thought. It's still got the endemic poverty. I mean, how many baseball players come out of the DR and talk about growing up in the lap of luxury?

You'd also have the language barrier, first and foremost. And I'd have to think that if the DR were that great a place to be, there wouldn't be nearly 10 million people in Haiti. Migration probably isn't easy, but it's not a big island -- how tough can it be?

And if you bring the bulk of the Haitian population anywhere, you're bringing in some of the neediest people in the world. These are folks with very little education, very little skills, very little money. If you bring them to, say, the U.S., what are they gonna do? They'd be reliant on the state for everything. And the standard of living they're accustomed to is dreadful, beyond anything we can imagine -- and beyond anything the scope of U.S. law would be prepared to allow. So even the meagre existence they have now becomes exponentially more expensive to maintain.

But then again, how can the world stand by and watch a country reduced to rubble?

 

Official capacity of collapsed prison: 1,200.

State Department's estimate of prison's actual population: 3,908.

 

We cannot comprehend what is going on over there. Sort of makes Katrina look small when compared.

I would guess the preserving health of the living is the first goal, so removing the dead to prevent disease spread and providing clean water is a start.

 

Rush Limbaugh: Obama will use Haiti to boost credibility with "light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country."

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201001130018