Help For Haiti In Wake of Earthquake Disaster

January 13th, 2010

If you haven’t been in a complete news vacuume since late yesterday afternoon, you know about the 7.0 Earthquake in Haiti.

Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after the strongest earthquake hit the poor Caribbean nation in more than 200 years crushed thousands of structures, from humble shacks to the National Palace and the UN peacekeeping headquarters. Untold numbers were still trapped.

Destroyed communications made it impossible to tell the extent of destruction from Tuesday afternoon’s 7.0-magnitude tremor, or to estimate how many were dead among the collapsed buildings in Haiti’s capital of about 2 million people.

Here’s a quick brief from the scattered information out there:

Haiti Earthquake

The Globe and Mail

Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after the strongest earthquake hit the poor Caribbean nation in more than 200 years crushed thousands of structures, from humble shacks to the National Palace and the UN peacekeeping headquarters. Untold numbers were still trapped.

Destroyed communications made it impossible to tell the extent of destruction from Tuesday afternoon’s 7.0-magnitude tremor, or to estimate how many were dead among the collapsed buildings in Haiti’s capital of about 2 million people.

Full article… reports that

Associated Press states

It seemed clear that the death toll from Tuesday afternoon’s magnitude-7.0 quake would run into the thousands. France’s foreign minister said the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was apparently among the dead.

International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said a third of Haiti’s 9 million people may need emergency aid and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge. The United Nations said the capital’s main airport was “fully operational” and that relief flights would begin Wednesday

Full article…

You can follow up to the minute updates at this CNN site

But before you go off to do that, please strongly consider taking action.

Implore our govement to provide relief assets and manpower via the military or whatever other means. I understand that the Coast Guard has started to position assets; but we know there were all kinds of assets positioned around New Orleans, but it took them days to actually move them in.

And make whatever donation you can make. I provide info below:

Governmental Contact and Donation Information

White House
202) 456-1414

House Speaker:
Nancy Pelosi - House Speaker 202-225-4965 / AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov, sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Senat Majority Leader
Harry Reid
202-224-3542

General Switch Board for the House of Representatives, where you can get anyones number 202-224-3121

House website: www.house.gov/ (can find anyones website to get emails and other contact info).

Food For The Poor is the organization I donate through in 2008, and I was happy with them.

Yele Haiti is Wyclef’s organization. It’s website has been overwhelmed, and has been down all morning.

Though you can text “yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to the Yele Haiti earthquake fund to start helping with quake relief. You can donate up to 6 times ($30). I bill it’ll just be charged to your next phone bill.

Pan America Relief

You can check out charities and how they spend donations at Charity Navigator



posted in Action Alert, Foreign News | | | View blog reactions |


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About The Blog

  • D. Yobachi Boswell

  • Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.

    I created this site to give new voice to socio-political issues that are in need of thoughtful consideration and redress.

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