Port au Prince has been destroyed

[heidi]

help_haiti

All three Doctors Without Borders locations. The air traffic control system. United Nations buildings. Homes. The presidential palace and government buildings and schools; the closest you can come to saying anything was lucky is that the quake happened when it did and not three hours earlier when schools and government offices would have been full.

They believe that hundreds of thousands may have been killed, but the final death toll may never be known.

FiveThirtyEight has a terrific piece about the history of Haiti - why it's been so damaged by political *and* environmental catastrophies over the last 100+ years.

I live only 700 miles from Haiti, and people across Miami today are waiting to hear from friends and relatives; our local disaster teams are heading down there throughout the day, but the infrastructure of the country has been wracked by the earthquake so terribly that it's unclear if help will be able to get to those who need it to save their lives.

It will take years to rebuild the country - as Anderson is reporting on CNN right now, there is a huge need for anything and everything.

I put together some links to organizations and charities soliciting donations on help_haiti, which I set up this morning as a locus for an auction of creative works (fan and original) - offering posts should be up this afternoon and bidding can start immediately - but keep checking back as offers will be added into early next week!

help_haiti. Please.

Also, I know I knew how to do this at some point but can someone please tell me how to do those boxes with the scroll bar on the right, where someone can cut & paste the content inside into a comment, so we can have a template for Offerings?

Comments

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

The impact here in Miami is just staggering. And it's weird, because it's helping our economy to help theirs - provisions, clothing, supplies - even hotel rooms for reporters and aid workers trying to get there. The Herald had something on the website about how this is our chance to pay it forward - we'll have thousands of refugee kids coming here to be with families over the next few months.

But it looks like we are going to pull in five figures just from help_haiti, which is wonderful.

[freckles42.livejournal.com]

It's weird the way it all works out, isn't it?

Five figures... WOW. That's so awesome! I wonder how much stuff we'll end up creating/giving, too. All that art, the words, the food, the videos, and everything else... It's amazing.

I've spoken with my coworkers - some of them have lost brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces, and one lost her parents. One hasn't heard from her family at all. It's worrying. But at the same time, our whole restaurant has rallied around them - and it's one of the reasons I keep going back to work at the OG. "When you're here, you're family" - it's not just our motto, we truly live it.