Haiti

It is Difficult to Imagine

I have read the Washington Post and New York Times every day regarding Haiti. It is hard to imagine an entire city that is now homeless. I have listened to the impressive coverage from the BBC and NPR; both doing amazing work in the area. Even with the rush of media down to Haiti, it is hard to wrap my head around the scale of destruction. One way to look at this disaster is to put it in the context of the United States.

If a similar natural disaster were to strike Northeast Ohio, it would have an effect on the citizens in Cuyahoga, Summit, Lorain, Lake, Medina, Geauga, Ashtabula, and Stark Counties to equal the population struggling to survive in Haiti. And it would be similar to everyone in the city of Cleveland Heights dying in this disaster.

To see similar numbers effected by the Haitian earthquake in the United States would be like a disaster hitting the entire states of Iowa or Mississippi. How long would it take to recover if nearly every building and all the infrastructure in Iowa were ruined?

The impact on the country of Haiti is similar to a disaster hitting every single state including every single resident of every state on our Eastern coast. Would the United States ever be the same if the entire Eastern United States were struck by a destructive event of the magnitude of the Haitian earthquake? Port-au-Prince contains basically one third of the population of the country. So, if a natural disaster struck the United States and knocked down buildings in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida that would be similar to the disaster that struck Haiti. From the tip of Miami to Edmundston, Maine all the way over to Buffalo and the heart of Appalachia in Virginia would all need rebuilding. From the panhandle of Florida to the Lake Champlain coast in Vermont, would all need new roads, sewers, and school buildings to be similar to the scale of the issues in Haiti. For the United States to see the same number of fatalities as they have experienced in Haiti would be for every single person in South Carolina or Colorado dying in a natural disaster.

We hope that you will support the Unicef Haitian Fund, American Red Cross, MercyCorps, Oxfam America, AmeriCares, Doctors without Borders, or the International Medical Corps in this time of extreme need.

Brian
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