Both Haiti’s endemic misery and the obstacles for rescue workers are in the spotlight. Earthquakes of similar magnitude have struck bigger cities in richer countries and claimed just a few dozen lives. But the absence of building codes in Haiti, as well as a severe wood shortage because of mass deforestation, mean that many structures in urban areas are made of thin, low-quality concrete. Such concrete is both prone to collapse and dangerous for those who are hit by it or buried beneath it. Ironically, some of the country’s poorest benefited from living in tin-roofed shacks, which were much easier to escape from.
Yet the majority of victims did not perish during the 35-second tremor. Ted Constan of Partners in Health, an American NGO, says that some 200,000 people were probably injured or trapped but not killed by the quake. He estimates that an additional 25,000 of them have died on each day that has passed since the tremor, as a result of treatable ailments such as bleeding, dehydration, suffocation and infection.
what black hole does our development aid fall into that Haiti's capital (and mark my words, countless other cities and capitals throughout the developing world) was in the sort of conditions that led to the deaths of tens of thousands? what exactly does our development aid go toward?
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