It's Happening in Haiti

What can I say about the situation in Haiti? It's mind-boggling and atrocious. Looking from the perspective of a helicopter over the scene, it is rubble -- each house and building pancaked like the next. It would be a huge challenge for a community in our country to overcome. How can the Haitians, who had nothing to begin with, recover from this? Listening to the news last night, I was struck by the fact that in Port au Prince, a city of two million, even before the quake there was not even one ambulance. Perhaps this quake was a wake up call to the rest of us that, even in modern times, people are living without the very basic necessities. We have to help. We are all really one nation - the nation of humanity. I am glad to see that the powers of the world are coming together to help this island nation, but saddened that it is taking too long. During the interim, people are dying. There are people still, almost a week later, trapped alive in some of those buildings. Some are uninjured in elevators or supermarket refrigerators or bank vaults -- the only fortified portions of the buildings that collapsed. I think it might be more horrifying to live for a week without someone coming to help you than it would be to die in the initial quake. It's happening.

This could happen here. I live in California, on the ring of fire. We have earthquakes often. They are small tremors and an occasional sizable shaker, but when the San Andreas fault ruptures, we will have widespread devastation. Perhaps it won't be like Haiti because our building codes are better, but when and 8.0 hits (100 times stronger than the 7.0 that hit Haiti), building codes aren't going to matter much. This could be us. Can you imagine having a baby in the circumstances that are now going on in Haiti? It's happening.

The orphanages in Haiti were understaffed and ill-equipped to begin with. Now, there are children living in the street, sleeping in the street, with nothing to eat or drink. There are no diapers. Can you imagine two young American girls in their early 20's managing an entire orphanage and trying to care for 50 children under these circumstances. It's happening.

I want to urge everyone who reads this to write and phone and e-mail your congresspeople, representatives, and senators. Donate money if you have it, but that's not enough. We need to get the orphans out of Haiti and to a place of shelter. Whether it is for permanent adoption or just for the time being so that they will be safe and won't have to look at the dead in the streets and the dogs who are eating the corpses because they aren't being fed either. At the moment, Haiti is Hades. It's Hell on earth. Awful things that most of us can not imagine are happening. Children should not have to endure such hell. There has been some assistance and a few of the children have been given permission to leave. All adoption paperwork has been lost, but there are families waiting to take those children and love them. What is more important -- paperwork or lives? Thousands of people are being placed in mass graves and no one will ever know who they are or where some disappeared to. That paperwork will never exist. So why not get the orphans out now, with or without paperwork? That's the humanitarian thing to do. Children are dying in Haiti. Some died during the earthquake, but many will die after it without the food, shelter, and medical care that is needed. It's happening.