Help! Help! Help! Haiti…..in Need of all the Help the World can Offer…..

On (specificaly depending on where you reside in this world) the morning of Wednesday 13th January 2010, breaking news on the Haitian earthquake was well on air. Pictures of disturbing images on TV and internet gave a clue of scale of the damage. I could not help shedding tears when I saw helpless people calling for help; some trapped and still alive in the buildings with no means of escape. Cameras revealed a bit of what happened. On one side you could see somebody dead, on the other side somebody being pulled out of the rubble with all excitement while on the other part you could see somebody stretching hand through crevice calling for help. Many survivors are in need of medical help, food, clothing and shelter. Those still trapped need a hand to save them. The situation is desperate and Haiti has little resources to cope with this disaster. Can you help? Yes. How? Go to www.unicef.com or www.cnn.com/impact

An average a Haitian lives on less than two dollars a day and this is how little you can donate to save the situation. It can save one person. A dollar may not help you grow rich and neither does it make you poor if you donate it to your brother or sister in a situation like this. It is true not all of us have the means to help and perhaps we can use the case to learn a few things such as disaster preparedness. Disasters like earthquakes, and generally most natural disasters, attack with little warning if any leaving no room for adequate preparation to successfully cope with the impacts. As a result many people are subjected to untold suffering in terms of life and loss of property.

Then what next? Many nations have departments of disaster preparedness. However, they all differ in the level of preparedness just as they differ in the resources they have at disposal and the particular likelihood of occurrence of disasters they anticipate. In a situation like this we require world cooperation. That is why the UN arms of disaster preparedness and management comes in. As much as it tries to fulfill its mandate, more is needed to be done to equip it better since in the past it is evident that it cannot offer all the needed help. Some nations very far from Haiti were the first to arrive with relief supplies. Considering the distance alone, relief arrive so late that if finds few people still alive. At the same time not all relief supplies can be hauled by faster means of transport like air. If there was a way of identifying “black spots” in this world and utilizing the same knowledge we use when looking for strategic positions we wish to locate military bases, we establish UN humanitarian relief bases with all the equipment necessary to handle possible disasters around those “spots”. Instead of reacting by sending relief aid when the disaster strikes, the concerned nations can offer some assistance in advance. Dogs, volunteer workers, doctors, medicine, some food and other light items can be delivered fast by air when needed. However, transporting heavy machinery and other specialized equipment may not be possible.

Where prevention is possible, it is high time we make it a habit. If it is possible to utilize some knowledge and use it in construction of houses that withstand earthquakes, flooding, wind, heat, extreme cold etc, let us instill it in our training institutions and government policies such as building codes. The same applies to any other knowledge which can help in averting any kind of disaster.