Haitian Earthquake Disaster.

Four days ago a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti in the Caribbean. In all of ten seconds it had killed 40,000 people and razed the country to the ground. It left 200,000 people seriously injured and made 3 million homeless. Currently food, water and medical supplies are in very short supply and under the Caribbean sun the dead are lying unburied in the streets. That means that over the coming days thousands more will die from disease, dehydration and a lack of medical care.

To make matters worse the fragile Haitian government has all but collapsed and the UN mission in the country has been wiped out killing the head of the mission and destroying much of the aid supplies and equipment that were already in the country. Coupled with the fact the countries only sea-port and air-port were both badly damaged and many of the countries streets are blocked with rubble and the dead the relief effort has been forced to begin with worse then nothing.

Thankfully the international response has been as awesome as the scale of the disaster itself. The USA, China, Brazil, The EU and even almost bankrupt countries like Iceland and Chile immediately sent specialist rescue teams to Haiti. Although the first of these began to arrive within hours of the earthquake the chaos in the capital and the lack of heavy lifting equipment meant that their first days had to be spent clearing the air-port and sea-port so they could bring more manpower and equipment into the country. This essential work is now more or less complete and the aid effort is fast approaching full strength. This means that aid flights are landing every two to three minutes at the air-port and more supplies are beginning to be brought in by sea from depots in Florida, Paraguay, Mexico and Brazil while more supplies are being brought in by land on the only road running from the Dominican Republic. The aid effort is being helped immensely by the United States Navy who have sent an aircraft carrier with helicopters to reach the parts of Haiti that are inaccessible by road and an amphibious assault ship which will be able to land men and equipment almost anywhere along Haiti's coastline. Once they are joined by a hospital ship that is currently on route they will form the equivalent of an entire city floating off the coast. Along with 10,000 troops this means that the USA has committed more men and equipment to the relief effort is Haiti then Britain has committed to fighting the war in Afghanistan. The next step is for them to complete the painfully slow process of inching their way through the rubble and corpse strewn streets. This will not happen any quicker if they have to waste their time fighting gangs of armed looters.

While the relief effort in Haiti has begun in earnest the work there will need to go on for weeks, months and even years to come and it will need to be paid for somehow. The United Nations have put a figure of at least US$5000million and to help reach that target Britain's Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) have launched an urgent appeal that you can donate to here;

https://www.donate.bt.com/dec_form_haiti.html where you should remember to say yes to gift aid because it won't cost you anything but will stop the Treasury stealing part of your donation.

Within the UK you can also donate £1 at a time directly to Doctors Without Borders by texting HELP to 61192.

If you live outside the UK or feel unable to donate to the DEC you can donate directly to;

Oxfam: http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/haiti-earthquake

Unicef: http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=9fLEJSOALpE&b=1023561

Medecins Sans Frontieres: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/otheroffices.cfm

International Red Cross/Red Crescent: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/helpicrc