The Earthquake in Haiti

Major Facts from the Reading:
In the reading about the earthquake in Haiti, I found that some of the most valuable information to me was the fact that people didn't even know who their leader was, or at least they were confused about it. I think that alone says how much these people lost and how catastrophic this earthquake was to these people. Another thing was, since everything was so damaged, Haiti's communication and transportation centers were not functioning properly. This hindered the whole country because they couldn't get the aid and supplies that they needed from helping countries. Everything was slowed down by this. Some people said that they delay in supplies lead to angry people who committed crimes such as looting and violence.  A doctor said that the violence and crimes were only delaying the supplies even longer, but citizens countered that the crime rate actually went down after the earthquake . Also, so many people died in this earthquake, there were so many people that Haiti had to bury them in mass graves. By January 22, the United Nations declared that the "emergency phase" was almost over and the government called off search for survivors. The airport control was passed onto the United States and before January 14, no relief efforts were organized by groups.  Many people were crossing the border into the Dominican Republic because they needed medical assistance and all of the hospitals in Haiti were filled. The Dominican Republic said that people could only come into their country if they are in need of medical help but they could only stay temporarily.

A question that I thought of while reading, but couldn't come up with an explanation for was: How is a country with no experience supposed to be prepared for catastrophe?
This kind of relates to the Hurricane Katrina story, because they were not prepared. But these situations are actually very different because the New Orleans government actually lied to their people about being prepared enough, in this case the government is at fault. In Haiti, the government never lied to their people, they just simply didn't prepare at all for earthquakes because they didn't have the funding or the experience with earthquakes. So in this case, it is the rest of the world at fault because they didn't provide money or knowledge to the Haitians.

Given the fact that many government officials and leaders were killed, how did the Haitian government and the citizens function and know what to do in the after math of the earthquake?
This is a question that two other people and I formulated in class on Tuesday. The issue of many government officials and leaders were killed leaves Haiti in a terrible situation. They have hardly no one to turn to or to direct them. It is very difficult not to be told what to do, especially after an incident like a deathly earthquake. Even though the president survived the earthquake, people were still confused over who was in charge. This shows how little the government informed the people and how bad the situation really was. And this kind of leads to another question that we came up with: Given the delays in supplies and angry people, how was the Haitian government supposed to control the people? The previous question is very relevant to this question and actually pretty much answers it. There was very little government and even the government that there was, people were confused about.

Given the fact that many of the Haitian people who died in the earthquake were buried in mass graves, how was the morale of the people effected by this?
Tons of people died during this earthquake, so many that the government and the country couldn't handle it. They had to bury a lot of people in mass graves. I am sure that this must have really effected the people's families and friends because being buried in a mass grave is kind of inhumane and doesn't show respect to the person who just died. I know that if one of my family members or a friend died and was not buried properly I would be very angry. And also, just the fact that there were so many people that died, they didn't even have enough room to bury all of them correctly. That alone is very heartbreaking because it means that so many people died.