For Israelis, Mixed Feelings on Aid Effort
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Dr. Ram Avraham treated a Haitian infant in an Israeli Defense Forces hospital tent near the Port-au-Prince airport.
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By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: January 21, 2010
JERUSALEM — The editorial cartoon in Thursday's mass-circulation Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot showed American soldiers digging among the ruins of Haiti. From within the rubble, a voice calls out, "Would you mind checking to see if the Israelis are available?"
Related
Aid Groups Focus on Haiti's Homeless (January 22, 2010)
Within Days, a Global Benefit Takes Shape (January 22, 2010)
Washington Memo: White House Eager to Project Image of Competence in Relief Efforts (January 22, 2010)
Economy in Shock Struggles to Restart (January 22, 2010)
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Interactive: The Missing | Connecting to Those Affected
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
A 3-year-old Haitian boy on Thursday in the pediatric tent of an Israeli Defense Forces hospital near the Port-au-Prince airport.
A week ago, ahead of most countries, Israel sent scores of doctors and other professionals to Haiti. Years of dealing with terrorist attacks combined with an advanced medical technology sector have made Israel one of the most nimble countries in disaster relief — a factor that Western television news correspondents have highlighted.
But Israelis have been watching with a range of emotions, as if the Haitian relief effort were a Rorschach test through which the nation examines itself. The left has complained that there is no reason to travel thousands of miles to help those in need — Gaza is an hour away. The right has argued that those who accuse Israel of inhumanity should take note of its selfless efforts and achievements in Haiti.
The government has been trying to figure out how to make the most of the relatively rare positive news coverage, especially after the severe criticism it has faced over its Gaza offensive a year ago.
"Israelis are caught in a great confusion over themselves," noted Uri Dromi, a commentator who used to be a government spokesman. "There is such a gap between what we can do in so many fields and the failure we feel trapped in with the Palestinians. There's nostalgia for the time when we were the darlings of the world, and the Haiti relief effort allows us to remember that feeling and say, you see we are not as bad as you think."
"Now They Love Us," was the headline Wednesday on the column of Eitan Haber, a close aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s and a Yediot columnist. "In another month or two, nobody will remember the good deeds" of Israeli soldiers, he wrote. "The very same countries and very same leaders who are currently lauding the State of Israel will order their representatives to vote against it at the United Nations, proceed to condemn I.D.F. operations in Gaza, and again slam its foreign minister."
Israeli journalists flew into Haiti with relief teams. And while the contours of the catastrophe have been well described, inherent in the coverage is the question of what Israel's performance says about it and its place in the world.
Much noted has been the absence of rich and powerful Persian Gulf countries in the relief effort, a point made here when the 2004 tsunami hit large parts of Asia and Israeli relief teams swung into action there as well.
Many commentators argued that the work in Haiti was a reflection of a central Jewish value. Michael Freund, a columnist in The Jerusalem Post, wrote on Thursday, "Though a vast gulf separates Israel from Haiti, with more than 10,500 kilometers of ocean lying between us, the Jewish people demonstrated that their extended hand can bridge any gap and traverse any chasm when it comes to saving lives."
But on the same page, another commentator, Larry Derfner, argued that while Israel's field hospital in Haiti is a reflection of something deep in the nation's character, "so is everything that's summed up in the name of 'Gaza.' " He wrote: "It's the Haiti side of Israel that makes the Gaza side so inexpressibly tragic. And more and more, the Haiti part of the national character has been dwarfed by the Gaza part."
Early in the week, Akiva Eldar, a leftist commentator and reporter with the newspaper Haaretz, made a similar point: "The remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza."
Aid Groups Focus on Haiti's Homeless
Damon Winter/The New York Times
A burning trash pile on the edge of a tent city set up on a car dealership parking lot in Port-au-Prince. Haitian and international officials are planning both immediate and permanent shelter.
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By RAY RIVERA and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 21, 2010
JACMEL, Haiti — Haiti has approved plans for more than a dozen sprawling tent cities in and around Port-au-Prince, the first step in an epic relocation effort that could reshape the country as up to one million people displaced by the earthquake find new places to live.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Hospital Ship Arrives
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Graphic
Streamlining Relief for Haiti's Displaced
Related
Washington Memo: White House Eager to Project Image of Competence in Relief Efforts (January 22, 2010)
For Israelis, Mixed Feelings on Aid Effort (January 22, 2010)
Economy in Shock Struggles to Restart (January 22, 2010)
Within Days, a Global Benefit Takes Shape (January 22, 2010)
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Interactive: The Missing | Connecting to Those Affected
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
Enlarge This Image
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Louis Richard, 17, peered out from a tent he is sharing in Jacmel, Haiti, with 34 other people. Most of the city's 40,000 residents lost their homes in the earthquake.
Here in one of the cities hardest hit by the earthquake — as in Port-au-Prince, the capital — the housing needs are acute, and demand for shelter has intensified. Officials with the Haitian government and the United Nations said Thursday that they were moving as quickly as possible to establish organized camps, with water, food and health care, before the rainy season starts to peak in May.
"A lot of these people have maybe a sheet on four sticks over their heads right now," said Niurka Piñeiro, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration. "It's really urgent that we get these tents so we can provide a little better cover from the elements."
Haitian and international officials, aware that these camps may become permanent, are hotly debating locations. In Phase 2 of the plan, private companies would be contracted to build apartment complexes and homes with the help of residents living in the tents.
"We are hoping that this concentration of people will lead to work," said Patrick Delatour, the minister of tourism, after a meeting with President René Préval. "They will help build their own housing."
Officials with the migration agency have argued for sites inside cities close to employment, while Haitian government ministers have stressed the need to build as much shelter as fast as possible.
Already, work has begun on government land near the suburb of Croix des Bouquets. United Nations troops from Brazil have begun leveling the ground in preparation for a tent city for around 30,000 people. Officials hope to house 100,000 people with the dozen or so sites selected so far, which include the lawn of the prime minister's office, but getting the tents to Haiti remains a difficult challenge.
A handful arrived Wednesday, and a larger shipment from Turkey and other countries came Thursday, but Ms. Piñeiro said thousands more would be needed. "We are really looking for family-sized tents," she said. "But at this point, we'll take anything."
Here on the southern coast in Jacmel, the country's fourth-largest city, where it has rained several times since the earthquake last week, every drop from the sky brings another round of fear.
Whole sections of the once vibrant downtown, about 25 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, were flattened in the earthquake. Most of the city's 40,000 residents are now homeless. While they say they need food, water and medicine, when asked for their top priority, they shout "tent, tent." Nothing is lost in translation because the Creole word is the same as the English one.
Patricia Legros is living in a bus-long shamble of blue tarps and shower curtains with an American flag for a door. She lives with her parents, a brother, cousins, neighbors. There is an artist, a taxi driver, a police officer, a tailor — 30 people in all. They sleep side by side on mattresses pulled from the rubble. Each night three of the men stand guard by firelight to keep cars from running them down.
Charles Mary René, 22, who has been living on a blanket in Toussaint Louverture Square here since the earthquake with her 3-year-old son and his father, Eddy Leonard, said that during the few times it rained, they just sat and got soaked. "What could we do, we have nowhere to go," she said.
Each night before they go to bed, like people everywhere in Haiti left homeless by the earthquake, they pray for some miracle before the rainy season sends water flooding in.
The answer for now is tents — and there are not nearly enough.
An aid group, Plan International, handed out 400 tents in Jacmel on Tuesday and planned to provide 300 more on Wednesday to people on a list provided by a local official. But when the group showed up at a homeless camp, hundreds rushed the vehicles carrying the tents, desperate for shelter, illustrating the difficulty of delivering aid.
"They had to leave without giving out a single one," said Benjamin Legoff, a French firefighter who was coordinating a medical clinic in the camp.
"Organization is the most important thing," he added. "The means without organization is nothing."
Robin Costello, a spokeswoman for the group, said the reason the group left was "to make sure nobody got hurt."
But for the people of Jacmel, it was another sign that the aid supply failed to match demand.
In Port-au-Prince, the frantic need for shelter is just as strong. Estimates from the United Nations suggest that every other building in the capital has collapsed. With frequent aftershocks rattling the city, almost all of Port-au-Prince's roughly four million residents, including temporary residents, seem to be sleeping under the stars.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
A burning trash pile on the edge of a tent city set up on a car dealership parking lot in Port-au-Prince. Haitian and international officials are planning both immediate and permanent shelter.
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By RAY RIVERA and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 21, 2010
JACMEL, Haiti — Haiti has approved plans for more than a dozen sprawling tent cities in and around Port-au-Prince, the first step in an epic relocation effort that could reshape the country as up to one million people displaced by the earthquake find new places to live.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Hospital Ship Arrives
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Graphic
Streamlining Relief for Haiti's Displaced
Related
Washington Memo: White House Eager to Project Image of Competence in Relief Efforts (January 22, 2010)
For Israelis, Mixed Feelings on Aid Effort (January 22, 2010)
Economy in Shock Struggles to Restart (January 22, 2010)
Within Days, a Global Benefit Takes Shape (January 22, 2010)
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Interactive: The Missing | Connecting to Those Affected
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
Enlarge This Image
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Louis Richard, 17, peered out from a tent he is sharing in Jacmel, Haiti, with 34 other people. Most of the city's 40,000 residents lost their homes in the earthquake.
Here in one of the cities hardest hit by the earthquake — as in Port-au-Prince, the capital — the housing needs are acute, and demand for shelter has intensified. Officials with the Haitian government and the United Nations said Thursday that they were moving as quickly as possible to establish organized camps, with water, food and health care, before the rainy season starts to peak in May.
"A lot of these people have maybe a sheet on four sticks over their heads right now," said Niurka Piñeiro, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration. "It's really urgent that we get these tents so we can provide a little better cover from the elements."
Haitian and international officials, aware that these camps may become permanent, are hotly debating locations. In Phase 2 of the plan, private companies would be contracted to build apartment complexes and homes with the help of residents living in the tents.
"We are hoping that this concentration of people will lead to work," said Patrick Delatour, the minister of tourism, after a meeting with President René Préval. "They will help build their own housing."
Officials with the migration agency have argued for sites inside cities close to employment, while Haitian government ministers have stressed the need to build as much shelter as fast as possible.
Already, work has begun on government land near the suburb of Croix des Bouquets. United Nations troops from Brazil have begun leveling the ground in preparation for a tent city for around 30,000 people. Officials hope to house 100,000 people with the dozen or so sites selected so far, which include the lawn of the prime minister's office, but getting the tents to Haiti remains a difficult challenge.
A handful arrived Wednesday, and a larger shipment from Turkey and other countries came Thursday, but Ms. Piñeiro said thousands more would be needed. "We are really looking for family-sized tents," she said. "But at this point, we'll take anything."
Here on the southern coast in Jacmel, the country's fourth-largest city, where it has rained several times since the earthquake last week, every drop from the sky brings another round of fear.
Whole sections of the once vibrant downtown, about 25 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, were flattened in the earthquake. Most of the city's 40,000 residents are now homeless. While they say they need food, water and medicine, when asked for their top priority, they shout "tent, tent." Nothing is lost in translation because the Creole word is the same as the English one.
Patricia Legros is living in a bus-long shamble of blue tarps and shower curtains with an American flag for a door. She lives with her parents, a brother, cousins, neighbors. There is an artist, a taxi driver, a police officer, a tailor — 30 people in all. They sleep side by side on mattresses pulled from the rubble. Each night three of the men stand guard by firelight to keep cars from running them down.
Charles Mary René, 22, who has been living on a blanket in Toussaint Louverture Square here since the earthquake with her 3-year-old son and his father, Eddy Leonard, said that during the few times it rained, they just sat and got soaked. "What could we do, we have nowhere to go," she said.
Each night before they go to bed, like people everywhere in Haiti left homeless by the earthquake, they pray for some miracle before the rainy season sends water flooding in.
The answer for now is tents — and there are not nearly enough.
An aid group, Plan International, handed out 400 tents in Jacmel on Tuesday and planned to provide 300 more on Wednesday to people on a list provided by a local official. But when the group showed up at a homeless camp, hundreds rushed the vehicles carrying the tents, desperate for shelter, illustrating the difficulty of delivering aid.
"They had to leave without giving out a single one," said Benjamin Legoff, a French firefighter who was coordinating a medical clinic in the camp.
"Organization is the most important thing," he added. "The means without organization is nothing."
Robin Costello, a spokeswoman for the group, said the reason the group left was "to make sure nobody got hurt."
But for the people of Jacmel, it was another sign that the aid supply failed to match demand.
In Port-au-Prince, the frantic need for shelter is just as strong. Estimates from the United Nations suggest that every other building in the capital has collapsed. With frequent aftershocks rattling the city, almost all of Port-au-Prince's roughly four million residents, including temporary residents, seem to be sleeping under the stars.
The International Organization for Migration has counted at least 447 ad hoc camps throughout the capital. The parks are full of people surviving under billowing sheets, washing themselves and their clothes in the open, but displaced families can also be found in the parking lot of a Domino's, on soccer fields behind churches and in grassy fields by the airport.
Enlarge This Image
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Produce vendors in Port-au-Prince were a sign that some measure of normalcy was returning.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Hospital Ship Arrives
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Graphic
Streamlining Relief for Haiti's Displaced
Related
Washington Memo: White House Eager to Project Image of Competence in Relief Efforts (January 22, 2010)
For Israelis, Mixed Feelings on Aid Effort (January 22, 2010)
Economy in Shock Struggles to Restart (January 22, 2010)
Within Days, a Global Benefit Takes Shape (January 22, 2010)
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Interactive: The Missing | Connecting to Those Affected
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
Without rain in the capital, people are mostly waiting patiently for help. On the lawn of the prime minister's office, Alain Jean François worked under the only sturdy tent available: a medical tent set up by the Red Cross. A physician's assistant with large hands in latex gloves, he said he had been living in the camp with five relatives since the day after the quake.
His home had collapsed, and while treating wounds has become his day job, he said that many of his patients had begun to worry about what would happen when it rained. "People here are very frightened because of the rain," he said. "It's very difficult."
The tents will be only a partial solution. Ms. Piñeiro, the spokeswoman for the migration organization, said the canvas tents she was expecting lacked hard floors, raising concerns that they might be washed away in a large storm.
Finding the serviceable locations in a country with so much damaged infrastructure has also been a challenge.
"The criteria is that they must have water," Mr. Delatour said. "They must be in government hands or in private hands at the disposal of the government, and that they can be developed not just for housing, but also for services such as health care."
The camps now filled with squatters are ad hoc societies of desperate people, who teeter between order and chaos. Outside the prime minister's office, where 3,650 people now live, according to the Red Cross, people pile their trash in one place. Grass has been worn down in paths between different areas.
But anxiety lies just below the surface. When the Red Cross distributed rice and beans for the second time Thursday around lunchtime — not everyone was served in the morning — a scrum of shouting and shoving greeted the aid workers. Eventually people lined up quietly, so close they looked sewn together.
In Jacmel, the battle to get food and other aid supplies tends to be even more brutal. The largest of the encampments is at a soccer field a few blocks from the town square, where officials say 5,900 people are living, only a handful in tents, the rest in whatever material they can find. Residents and aid workers say that near-melees break out when the one meal, at 4 p.m., begins. And even then, what people grab can be hard to hold on to.
"You are sleeping and people reach their hands in and try to take your stuff," said Jimmy Jean Philippe, 33, who has been living in the camp since the quake. "That's why we need security."
Enlarge This Image
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Produce vendors in Port-au-Prince were a sign that some measure of normalcy was returning.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Hospital Ship Arrives
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Graphic
Streamlining Relief for Haiti's Displaced
Related
Washington Memo: White House Eager to Project Image of Competence in Relief Efforts (January 22, 2010)
For Israelis, Mixed Feelings on Aid Effort (January 22, 2010)
Economy in Shock Struggles to Restart (January 22, 2010)
Within Days, a Global Benefit Takes Shape (January 22, 2010)
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Interactive: The Missing | Connecting to Those Affected
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
Without rain in the capital, people are mostly waiting patiently for help. On the lawn of the prime minister's office, Alain Jean François worked under the only sturdy tent available: a medical tent set up by the Red Cross. A physician's assistant with large hands in latex gloves, he said he had been living in the camp with five relatives since the day after the quake.
His home had collapsed, and while treating wounds has become his day job, he said that many of his patients had begun to worry about what would happen when it rained. "People here are very frightened because of the rain," he said. "It's very difficult."
The tents will be only a partial solution. Ms. Piñeiro, the spokeswoman for the migration organization, said the canvas tents she was expecting lacked hard floors, raising concerns that they might be washed away in a large storm.
Finding the serviceable locations in a country with so much damaged infrastructure has also been a challenge.
"The criteria is that they must have water," Mr. Delatour said. "They must be in government hands or in private hands at the disposal of the government, and that they can be developed not just for housing, but also for services such as health care."
The camps now filled with squatters are ad hoc societies of desperate people, who teeter between order and chaos. Outside the prime minister's office, where 3,650 people now live, according to the Red Cross, people pile their trash in one place. Grass has been worn down in paths between different areas.
But anxiety lies just below the surface. When the Red Cross distributed rice and beans for the second time Thursday around lunchtime — not everyone was served in the morning — a scrum of shouting and shoving greeted the aid workers. Eventually people lined up quietly, so close they looked sewn together.
In Jacmel, the battle to get food and other aid supplies tends to be even more brutal. The largest of the encampments is at a soccer field a few blocks from the town square, where officials say 5,900 people are living, only a handful in tents, the rest in whatever material they can find. Residents and aid workers say that near-melees break out when the one meal, at 4 p.m., begins. And even then, what people grab can be hard to hold on to.
"You are sleeping and people reach their hands in and try to take your stuff," said Jimmy Jean Philippe, 33, who has been living in the camp since the quake. "That's why we need security."
Critic's Corner Weekend: 'Hope for Haiti Now' telethon
Posted 19h 7m ago | Comments 8 | Recommend 4 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
JANUARY TV CALENDAR
WHAT'S ON TV TONIGHT?
8:00 PM 8:30 PM 9:00 PM 9:30 PM 10:00 PM 10:30 PM
ABC Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live 20/20 New
CBS Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Medium
NBC Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Dateline NBC
FOX Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Local Programming
CW Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Local Programming
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By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
E-mail Robert Bianco at rbianco@usatoday.com
•The weekend's biggest event is tonight's celebrity telethon Hope for Haiti Now (8 ET/PT), organized by George Clooney and seen at multiple outlets, including all five commercial broadcast networks.
REVIEW: 'Spartacus' is a slave to shock value
TV TALK: Robert Bianco's chat returns Monday; leave a question
•It's obvious why Syfy wants a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, but why would viewers? Beloved by critics and a loyal cult of viewers, Battlestar was an extended parable about a band of surviving humans trying to escape robotic destruction, restart society and identify and avoid the mistakes of the past. Its prequel, Caprica (* * out of four, tonight, 9 ET/PT), is all about those past mistakes (theirs, mind you, not ours) and their inescapable consequences, which would seem to be an inherently less compelling story.
Knowing where we're headed wouldn't matter if the journey were inspiring, but Caprica is lugubrious, portentous to the point of unintentional self-satire and, to any non-initiate, impenetrable. Clarity was never a Battlestar strong point, but the writers now seem to have adopted incomprehensibility as a virtue. It isn't. Again, if you loved all things Battlestar beyond measure, Caprica may satisfy. For all others, this is a planet best left unvisited.
Posted 19h 7m ago | Comments 8 | Recommend 4 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
JANUARY TV CALENDAR
WHAT'S ON TV TONIGHT?
8:00 PM 8:30 PM 9:00 PM 9:30 PM 10:00 PM 10:30 PM
ABC Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live 20/20 New
CBS Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Medium
NBC Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Dateline NBC
FOX Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Local Programming
CW Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief Live Local Programming
View complete TV Listings
Enter your ZIP code below to see local listings.
TV Listings powered by Zap2it
Share
Yahoo! Buzz
Add to Mixx
More
Subscribe
myYahoo
iGoogle
More
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
E-mail Robert Bianco at rbianco@usatoday.com
•The weekend's biggest event is tonight's celebrity telethon Hope for Haiti Now (8 ET/PT), organized by George Clooney and seen at multiple outlets, including all five commercial broadcast networks.
REVIEW: 'Spartacus' is a slave to shock value
TV TALK: Robert Bianco's chat returns Monday; leave a question
•It's obvious why Syfy wants a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, but why would viewers? Beloved by critics and a loyal cult of viewers, Battlestar was an extended parable about a band of surviving humans trying to escape robotic destruction, restart society and identify and avoid the mistakes of the past. Its prequel, Caprica (* * out of four, tonight, 9 ET/PT), is all about those past mistakes (theirs, mind you, not ours) and their inescapable consequences, which would seem to be an inherently less compelling story.
Knowing where we're headed wouldn't matter if the journey were inspiring, but Caprica is lugubrious, portentous to the point of unintentional self-satire and, to any non-initiate, impenetrable. Clarity was never a Battlestar strong point, but the writers now seem to have adopted incomprehensibility as a virtue. It isn't. Again, if you loved all things Battlestar beyond measure, Caprica may satisfy. For all others, this is a planet best left unvisited.
Fees, delays won't mar Haiti donations
Updated 6h 37m ago | Comments 2 | Recommend 1 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
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By Christine Dugas, USA TODAY
It's getting easier to donate money to Haitian relief efforts — and to feel certain that your full donation goes to help, rather than being diluted by fees and administrative charges.
The donations will carry special tax breaks, too, should President Obama sign a bill today that would let Americans take a deduction on their 2009 tax returns for charitable donations made to Haitian earthquake relief through February.
AFTERSHOCK: Temblor spreads new fears
MORE: U.S. prepares Gitmo for Haitian migrants
VENDORS: Some commerce returns in Haiti
SEA HOSPITAL: 'Comfort' starts its healing mission
GIVING: More go online or text to donate for quake victims
VOLUNTEERS: Thousands made helping in Haiti a habit
And many companies are making sure donations are getting to relief efforts quickly and will not be reduced by fees. Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover have agreed to suspend fees for credit card donations to many charities. Text-message donations to charities such as the American Red Cross also have surged, prompting major wireless companies to waive similar fees.
It can take up to 90 days for funds pledged via text message to be passed on to a charity, because the wireless company waits until customers pay their bills before sending the donation. But major wireless carriers have decided to speed the delivery of these donations.
"We've made sure that the money was in the hands of those who need it as soon as possible," says Verizon spokesman Chuck Hamby. So far, Verizon has sent $8 million to the American Red Cross that it has received from customer pledges.
"I think it's a noble and right thing for them to suspend it for a time, particularly when the money will be used for such a difficult situation as we see in Haiti," says Herman "Art" Taylor, CEO of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance.
Updated 6h 37m ago | Comments 2 | Recommend 1 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
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By Christine Dugas, USA TODAY
It's getting easier to donate money to Haitian relief efforts — and to feel certain that your full donation goes to help, rather than being diluted by fees and administrative charges.
The donations will carry special tax breaks, too, should President Obama sign a bill today that would let Americans take a deduction on their 2009 tax returns for charitable donations made to Haitian earthquake relief through February.
AFTERSHOCK: Temblor spreads new fears
MORE: U.S. prepares Gitmo for Haitian migrants
VENDORS: Some commerce returns in Haiti
SEA HOSPITAL: 'Comfort' starts its healing mission
GIVING: More go online or text to donate for quake victims
VOLUNTEERS: Thousands made helping in Haiti a habit
And many companies are making sure donations are getting to relief efforts quickly and will not be reduced by fees. Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover have agreed to suspend fees for credit card donations to many charities. Text-message donations to charities such as the American Red Cross also have surged, prompting major wireless companies to waive similar fees.
It can take up to 90 days for funds pledged via text message to be passed on to a charity, because the wireless company waits until customers pay their bills before sending the donation. But major wireless carriers have decided to speed the delivery of these donations.
"We've made sure that the money was in the hands of those who need it as soon as possible," says Verizon spokesman Chuck Hamby. So far, Verizon has sent $8 million to the American Red Cross that it has received from customer pledges.
"I think it's a noble and right thing for them to suspend it for a time, particularly when the money will be used for such a difficult situation as we see in Haiti," says Herman "Art" Taylor, CEO of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance.
Fine line between stealing, surviving in Haiti
Updated 7h 58m ago | Comments 123 | Recommend 6 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
Enlarge By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
In Carrefour, Haiti, Michel Chedler, 28, gets protection from ploice after he claimed a mob beat him over his possession of a boombox.
EARLIER HAITI COVERAGE
Interactives: Photos from Haiti | Map of earthquake zone | Timeline of deadly quakes
Haiti: Country's outlook had been improving | Geology points to big quakes
Washington: Obama pledges starter of $100M in relief | Status halts deportations | Clinton, Bush combine efforts
Reaction: Churches offer solace | News slow to reach loved ones | Facebook becomes 'lifeline'
Aid: Donations may break records | Private donors critical | U.S. agencies coordinate rescues | World mobilizes relief
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Andre Pierre pulled a crude wooden cart Thursday with car tires for wheels through the downtown financial district. He had scavenged the rubble and hit a jackpot of wooden boards and strips of metal.
"I'll bring the wood to my wife so she can make a fire to cook for our two kids," said Pierre, who lives in the city's Cité Soleil slum. "I'm going to sell the iron for money."
Pierre was doing what thousands of Haitians are doing, finding ways to survive the quake that left about 1.5 million of them homeless.
BREAKING:Haiti to move 400,000 quake survivors
RELIEF: Nations set differences aside to expedite relief to Haiti
PHOTOS: Devastating earthquake hits Haiti
INTERACTIVE: Relief efforts in Port-au-Prince
In these rough streets, though, police and residents draw a line between scavenging and looting. Steal the wrong thing and your neighbors may exact vigilante justice. Police, residents say, may shoot a thief on the spot and leave the body lying in the street as an example.
Downtown, an armed Haitian National Police officer watched as scavengers hammered on the concrete amid corpses to get at the metal and buried suitcases. Across the street, men used saws to strip down wires.
"The biggest problem is the burglars breaking into the stores and taking goods from the rubble," police officer Willy Jean Baptiste said as he stood watch over the Lone Star pharmacy and an appliance store.
"We have no problem with people taking stuff on the ground, the wood and the metal, but we have a problem when they break into the stores," Baptiste said.
Dozens of people Thursday scrambled over the rubble in downtown Port-au-Prince, pulling anything they could salvage from the piles of twisted metal, crumbling cement and rotting bodies.
One young man found a puzzle, still in its plastic wrapping, of the United States. Another man took a hacksaw to the downed electric cables in hope of finding copper wire he could sell. Crushed cars from a five-story parking garage had been stripped of their tires.
Willem Maurice, 40, fished out two bottles of cough syrup from a collapsed pharmacy. "I'm holding onto it," Maurice said. "I don't need it. I just found it on the ground."
Calixo Fritzner hammered at a concrete block amid rotting corpses in an area where vendors sold suitcases.
"Whatever we find, we take, whether it's metal or suitcases," Fritzner said. "We'll sell it for whatever we get for it. We have to provide food for our families."
In Carrefour, a mob of young men chased a suspected thief down the street, beating him bloody until they forced him into the police substation.
"It's mine, it's mine," Michel Chedler, 28, told police.
Chedler, his white undershirt soaked with blood and a T-shirt pressed against his head to staunch the bleeding, sat on the curb of the police station driveway with the boombox he was accused of stealing tucked protectively between his feet. The speaker had broken off, and the radio was smeared with blood.
"I left it on the floor. A guy came with a gun and hit me in the head with the butt of the gun," Chedler said.
Police said they would hold him for a while and then let him go when the crowd dispersed.
With few police officers and the collapse of the city's main prison in the Haitian earthquake, the police feel beleaguered, Baptiste said.
"I'm not actually scared, but there are 4,000 prisoners on the loose," Baptiste said. "So if a group were to come towards me, alone or not, there's nothing I can do."
When he does encounter a looter, Baptiste said, he has few options.
"There's no prison. We can't do anything with them but scare them off and make them run away by shooting in the air," he said. "The few number of police officers still alive, who didn't die in the earthquake, are the only ones trying to put order to this mess, and it's not a lot."
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Enlarge By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
In Carrefour, Haiti, Michel Chedler, 28, gets protection from ploice after he claimed a mob beat him over his possession of a boombox.
EARLIER HAITI COVERAGE
Interactives: Photos from Haiti | Map of earthquake zone | Timeline of deadly quakes
Haiti: Country's outlook had been improving | Geology points to big quakes
Washington: Obama pledges starter of $100M in relief | Status halts deportations | Clinton, Bush combine efforts
Reaction: Churches offer solace | News slow to reach loved ones | Facebook becomes 'lifeline'
Aid: Donations may break records | Private donors critical | U.S. agencies coordinate rescues | World mobilizes relief
By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Andre Pierre pulled a crude wooden cart Thursday with car tires for wheels through the downtown financial district. He had scavenged the rubble and hit a jackpot of wooden boards and strips of metal.
"I'll bring the wood to my wife so she can make a fire to cook for our two kids," said Pierre, who lives in the city's Cité Soleil slum. "I'm going to sell the iron for money."
Pierre was doing what thousands of Haitians are doing, finding ways to survive the quake that left about 1.5 million of them homeless.
BREAKING:Haiti to move 400,000 quake survivors
RELIEF: Nations set differences aside to expedite relief to Haiti
PHOTOS: Devastating earthquake hits Haiti
INTERACTIVE: Relief efforts in Port-au-Prince
In these rough streets, though, police and residents draw a line between scavenging and looting. Steal the wrong thing and your neighbors may exact vigilante justice. Police, residents say, may shoot a thief on the spot and leave the body lying in the street as an example.
Downtown, an armed Haitian National Police officer watched as scavengers hammered on the concrete amid corpses to get at the metal and buried suitcases. Across the street, men used saws to strip down wires.
"The biggest problem is the burglars breaking into the stores and taking goods from the rubble," police officer Willy Jean Baptiste said as he stood watch over the Lone Star pharmacy and an appliance store.
"We have no problem with people taking stuff on the ground, the wood and the metal, but we have a problem when they break into the stores," Baptiste said.
Dozens of people Thursday scrambled over the rubble in downtown Port-au-Prince, pulling anything they could salvage from the piles of twisted metal, crumbling cement and rotting bodies.
One young man found a puzzle, still in its plastic wrapping, of the United States. Another man took a hacksaw to the downed electric cables in hope of finding copper wire he could sell. Crushed cars from a five-story parking garage had been stripped of their tires.
Willem Maurice, 40, fished out two bottles of cough syrup from a collapsed pharmacy. "I'm holding onto it," Maurice said. "I don't need it. I just found it on the ground."
Calixo Fritzner hammered at a concrete block amid rotting corpses in an area where vendors sold suitcases.
"Whatever we find, we take, whether it's metal or suitcases," Fritzner said. "We'll sell it for whatever we get for it. We have to provide food for our families."
In Carrefour, a mob of young men chased a suspected thief down the street, beating him bloody until they forced him into the police substation.
"It's mine, it's mine," Michel Chedler, 28, told police.
Chedler, his white undershirt soaked with blood and a T-shirt pressed against his head to staunch the bleeding, sat on the curb of the police station driveway with the boombox he was accused of stealing tucked protectively between his feet. The speaker had broken off, and the radio was smeared with blood.
"I left it on the floor. A guy came with a gun and hit me in the head with the butt of the gun," Chedler said.
Police said they would hold him for a while and then let him go when the crowd dispersed.
With few police officers and the collapse of the city's main prison in the Haitian earthquake, the police feel beleaguered, Baptiste said.
"I'm not actually scared, but there are 4,000 prisoners on the loose," Baptiste said. "So if a group were to come towards me, alone or not, there's nothing I can do."
When he does encounter a looter, Baptiste said, he has few options.
"There's no prison. We can't do anything with them but scare them off and make them run away by shooting in the air," he said. "The few number of police officers still alive, who didn't die in the earthquake, are the only ones trying to put order to this mess, and it's not a lot."
Secuela del desastre enHaití: Miles de huérfanos
Tamara Lush / Associated Press | 2010-01-21 | Hoy Nueva York
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DOS NIÑAS sin padres comparten comida en una ciudad e tiendas levantada en el club de golf Petionville de Puerto Príncipe. / AP
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PUERTO PRÍNCIPE
El paciente de cinco meses en el hospital de campaña israelí no tiene nombre, apenas un número.
Nadie sabe quién dejó al niño semiinconsciente en el centro médico improvisado después de recogerlo entre los escombros de un edificio cuatro días después del terremoto de la semana pasada. Ahora que se recupera, los médicos deben tomar una decisión difícil.
"¿Qué haremos con él cuando terminemos?", se preguntó el doctor Assa Amit, jefe del departamento pediátrico del hospital.
Nadie sabe quiénes son sus familiares o siquiera si alguno de ellos está vivo.
Nadie da una cifra
El terremoto dejó decenas de miles de huérfanos, dicen las organizaciones de ayuda: son tantos que nadie se arriesga a dar una cifra.
En medio de la destrucción generalizada y el caos creciente, se entiende que haya muchos niños abandonados.
"Por ahora están en las calles", dijo Elizabeth Rodgers, de la organización británica SOS Children. "Sin duda, la mayoría de ellos están a la intemperie".
Antes del mortífero terremoto del 12 de enero, abundaban los huérfanos en Haití, uno de los países más pobres del mundo: en sus asilos y hogares para huérfanos vivían 380.000 niños, según el sitio de internet del Fondo de la ONU para la Infancia.
Algunos habían perdido a sus padres en desastres anteriores, como las cuatro tormentas tropicales o huracanes que mataron a 800 personas en 2008.
Los grupos internacionales de ayuda intentan acelerar los procesos de adopción que ya estaban en curso o mediante personal que podría evacuar a miles a Estados Unidos u otros países.
'Pierre Pan'
Por otra parte, la Iglesia Católica de Miami propone una política similar al llamado Operativo Pedro Pan de 1960, que permitió trasladar a 14.000 niños de Cuba a Estados Unidos. Bajo el nuevo plan, llamado "Pierre Pan", huérfanos haitianos serían alojados en asilos y luego entregados a familias adoptivas.
Tamara Lush / Associated Press | 2010-01-21 | Hoy Nueva York
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2
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Calificación promedio:
Tamaño del texto:
Imprimir Enviar Comentar Guardar Vincular a
DOS NIÑAS sin padres comparten comida en una ciudad e tiendas levantada en el club de golf Petionville de Puerto Príncipe. / AP
1/1
PUERTO PRÍNCIPE
El paciente de cinco meses en el hospital de campaña israelí no tiene nombre, apenas un número.
Nadie sabe quién dejó al niño semiinconsciente en el centro médico improvisado después de recogerlo entre los escombros de un edificio cuatro días después del terremoto de la semana pasada. Ahora que se recupera, los médicos deben tomar una decisión difícil.
"¿Qué haremos con él cuando terminemos?", se preguntó el doctor Assa Amit, jefe del departamento pediátrico del hospital.
Nadie sabe quiénes son sus familiares o siquiera si alguno de ellos está vivo.
Nadie da una cifra
El terremoto dejó decenas de miles de huérfanos, dicen las organizaciones de ayuda: son tantos que nadie se arriesga a dar una cifra.
En medio de la destrucción generalizada y el caos creciente, se entiende que haya muchos niños abandonados.
"Por ahora están en las calles", dijo Elizabeth Rodgers, de la organización británica SOS Children. "Sin duda, la mayoría de ellos están a la intemperie".
Antes del mortífero terremoto del 12 de enero, abundaban los huérfanos en Haití, uno de los países más pobres del mundo: en sus asilos y hogares para huérfanos vivían 380.000 niños, según el sitio de internet del Fondo de la ONU para la Infancia.
Algunos habían perdido a sus padres en desastres anteriores, como las cuatro tormentas tropicales o huracanes que mataron a 800 personas en 2008.
Los grupos internacionales de ayuda intentan acelerar los procesos de adopción que ya estaban en curso o mediante personal que podría evacuar a miles a Estados Unidos u otros países.
'Pierre Pan'
Por otra parte, la Iglesia Católica de Miami propone una política similar al llamado Operativo Pedro Pan de 1960, que permitió trasladar a 14.000 niños de Cuba a Estados Unidos. Bajo el nuevo plan, llamado "Pierre Pan", huérfanos haitianos serían alojados en asilos y luego entregados a familias adoptivas.
Hugo Chavez Mouthpiece Says U.S. Hit Haiti With 'Earthquake Weapon'
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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Hugo Chavez blames the U.S. for the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
The United States apparently possesses an "earthquake weapon" that set off the catastrophic quake in Haiti and killed 200,000 innocents. Don't believe it's true? Just ask Hugo Chavez.
Citing an alleged report from Russia's Northern Fleet, the Venezuelan strongman's state mouthpiece ViVe TV shot out a press release saying the 7.0 magnitude Haiti quake was caused by a U.S. test of an experimental shockwave system that can also create "weather anomalies to cause floods, droughts and hurricanes."
The station's Web site added that the U.S. government's HAARP program, an atmospheric research facility in Alaska (and frequent subject of conspiracy theories), was also to blame for a Jan. 9 quake in Eureka, Calif., and may have been behind the 7.8-magnitude quake in China that killed nearly 90,000 people in 2008.
What's more, the site says, the cataclysmic ruin in Haiti was only a test run for much bigger game: the coming showdown with Iran.
The ultimate goal of the test attack in Haiti, the report reads, is the United States' "planned destruction of Iran through a series of earthquakes designed to topple the current Islamic regime."
The story has since been taken down from the Venezuelan Web site, but a Google cache of the charges remains intact.
Click here to see the report (Spanish) | Click here to see the report (English)
The publication of the story came just days after Chavez himself accused the U.S. of using the earthquake as an excuse to "invade and militarily occupy Haiti," a nation so poor that its entire economy is based on foreign aid — particularly from the U.S.
"The empire (the U.S.) is taking Haiti over the bodies and tears of its people," he said at a press conference.
"I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. They are occupying Haiti undercover."
By week's end, some 16,000 U.S. troops are expected to be providing humanitarian assistance in Haiti, where they have taken control of the only working airport and are coordinating relief efforts on the ground.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
ShareThis
AP
Hugo Chavez blames the U.S. for the devastating earthquake in Haiti.
The United States apparently possesses an "earthquake weapon" that set off the catastrophic quake in Haiti and killed 200,000 innocents. Don't believe it's true? Just ask Hugo Chavez.
Citing an alleged report from Russia's Northern Fleet, the Venezuelan strongman's state mouthpiece ViVe TV shot out a press release saying the 7.0 magnitude Haiti quake was caused by a U.S. test of an experimental shockwave system that can also create "weather anomalies to cause floods, droughts and hurricanes."
The station's Web site added that the U.S. government's HAARP program, an atmospheric research facility in Alaska (and frequent subject of conspiracy theories), was also to blame for a Jan. 9 quake in Eureka, Calif., and may have been behind the 7.8-magnitude quake in China that killed nearly 90,000 people in 2008.
What's more, the site says, the cataclysmic ruin in Haiti was only a test run for much bigger game: the coming showdown with Iran.
The ultimate goal of the test attack in Haiti, the report reads, is the United States' "planned destruction of Iran through a series of earthquakes designed to topple the current Islamic regime."
The story has since been taken down from the Venezuelan Web site, but a Google cache of the charges remains intact.
Click here to see the report (Spanish) | Click here to see the report (English)
The publication of the story came just days after Chavez himself accused the U.S. of using the earthquake as an excuse to "invade and militarily occupy Haiti," a nation so poor that its entire economy is based on foreign aid — particularly from the U.S.
"The empire (the U.S.) is taking Haiti over the bodies and tears of its people," he said at a press conference.
"I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. They are occupying Haiti undercover."
By week's end, some 16,000 U.S. troops are expected to be providing humanitarian assistance in Haiti, where they have taken control of the only working airport and are coordinating relief efforts on the ground.
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