A woman checks the toe tag on the body of a deceased earthquake victim in the parking lot of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital. UN Photo/Logan Abassi

There is no Olympics of tragedy nor is there value in engaging in comparative suffering. Nevertheless, if we were to look at the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, an exercise in triage is underway and the work is undone.

The Feb. 27 Chile earthquake registered 8.8 on the Richter scale and was the eighth largest in recorded history.

The January 12 earthquake in Haiti registered much lower, at 7.0 on the scale, yet the suffering, leave out the numbers, appears to never end. In Chile the government is totaling damage reports and checking the wine crop. In Haiti, international agencies face the rainy season, despair and misery.

The difference of course is development. Haiti needs building, more than rebuilding, rescue not just from the earthquake, but from a tragedy that spans generations – a mostly human-made disaster.

On the human dignity scale, Haiti ranks high. Every day, there’s a story about beauty and grace amid the ruins. There’s the story in the New York Times about Beken, the Haitian musician living in the ruins.

The Boston-based relief group, Partners in Health, is the subject of a video worth watching; it offers a look at how the rescuers are drawn close to the victims as they work to save lives.

The heart of the message is a blog by Lisa Armstrong for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, who says that for the rescuers in Haiti “there is no us and them, only we.”

Armstrong’s phrase is a good mantra for considering Haiti and the aftermath of what Haitians refer to simply as the catastrophe. She reminds us that the suffering cannot be forgotten and the rescue mission should be the responsibility of all governments and all people.

- Peter Eisner

Map courtesy of WineWeb.com

Worldfocus Consulting Producer Edward Deitch is an MSNBC.com wine columnist who also blogs at Vint-ed, where this post originally appeared.

The impact of the massive earthquake on Chile’s wine industry has become more clear in recent days, and it is significant, though not as bad as some had feared.

Concha y Toro, Chile’s largest producer and exporter with vineyards throughout the wine region, said it had suspended its production for at least a week while it assesses the full extent of the damage.

In a statement, it said, “Our company, as well as the rest of the industry, have been heavily impacted by this catastrophe.” It described serious damage to some of its main wineries and “important loss in wine and production capacity,” noting that the area in central Chile that felt the biggest impact from the quake “is the heartland of wine production.”

Another big wine operation, Miguel Torers Chile, said “material losses are significant” at its winery in the Curico Valley. About 300 oak casks were smashed, thousands of bottles were destroyed and a stainless steel vat with a capacity of 100,000 liters cracked, losing all the wine.

The winery’s president, Miguel Torres Maczassek, was on a business trip to the United States when the quake hit.

Melanie McEvoy Quirke, a spokesperson for the winery in New York, told me that some of Torres’s vineyards were even closer to the epicenter than the winery itself and that “as we speak they are getting ready for the harvest.” She had no information yet on vineyard damage.

Worries about the harvest were echoed in a comment on my blog from Tim Britton, an importer of South American wines in Berkeley, California, who said he had two concerns:

One, that not only have some of the vineyards lost stock, not all but many have some significant losses of bottle and vat stock; and two, the harvest is not far off and both equipment and workers will now be in very short supply. The impact of this quake on Chile’s wine exports may be felt for many years. The good news from our contacts is that with one exception no wineries incurred loss of life due to the fortunate timing of a Saturday early morning.

Juliet Rizek, a spokesperson for TGIC Wine Importers in Woodland Hills, California, said two of the wineries it represents, Viña Montes in Colchagua and Viña Santa Ema in the Maipo Valley, suffered some wine loss and structural damage to older buildings. She said the wineries had generators and were keeping the temperatures of the wines under control.

In a statement on the company’s Web site, the president and founder, Alex Guarachi, who is Chilean himself, offers a list of relief organizations to which donations can be texted on cell phones. By today, Montes reported that its equipment and bottle lines were operational and that power had returned. It said it would proceed with the harvest as originally planned.

Another company, Arboleda, reported damage to some of its wineries and continues to evaluate its losses and the impact on market availability. It advised customers to plan an extra two weeks of lead time for orders, saying that even if the winery is working, there will likely be a backlog at ports, which will place a priority on perishable goods such as fresh fruits.

- Edward Deitch

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a brief stop in Chile today, delivering 25 satellite phones to the president as part of a larger U.S. aid package that will follow.

For the more on the situation in Chile, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Christopher Sabatini, the Senior Director of Policy at the Council of the Americas. He says that Chile is prepared to handle much of the situation on its own, with targeted assistance from the U.S. and other countries.

In Concepción, Chile’s second largest city, rescue teams race against time to find survivors. Lucía Newman of Al Jazeera English has this report:

Al Jazeera English’s Teresa Bo has the latest on the destruction in the battered coastal town of Constitución:

The Ushahidi-Chile project map on March 2.

The Ushahidi crisis mapping site, which recently collated information from Haitian earthquake victims, has set up a sister site to aggregate similar data from Chile, a country recovering from a devastating 8.8-magnitude quake.

Ushahidi-Chile collects, filters and then maps information submitted by citizens via email, text message and Twitter feeds. This Ushahidi project is coordinated by students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and its goal is to guide the relief effort and identify immediate needs.

“The idea behind the site is to provide as much information as possible to organizations in the field and to people in Chile,” said Anahi Ayala Iacucci, co-director of the SIPA team for Ushahidi-Chile. “We put available information onto a map that anyone can access.”

An advantage of the site, she says, is that it combines individual nuggets of information in one place and can help establish an overview of the situation on the ground.

Messages currently on the site include information on medical emergencies, trapped survivors and structural damage. For example, from Santa Cruz: “No Electricity, Buildings Down in Santa Cruz”. Another message from Santiago reads “Plz Help: im stuck under a building with my child”. According to Ayala Iacucci, information on missing people is passed on to Google’s Missing Person Finder site.

“Our major source of information is from Twitter feeds, the web and from monitoring local media,” said Ayala Iacucci, adding that there is still reasonable access to the internet in Chile. In Haiti, by contrast, most information that Ushahidi received was by text message. Around 50 student volunteers at SIPA - many of them from Latin America - translate the collected information and then input the data onto the interactive map.

The project will continue at SIPA until the operation is handed over to Chilean volunteers. “In this sense it is a full circle,” said Ayala Iacucci. “We receive information from the field, and put it back into field.”

Ushahidi means “testimony” in Swahili and was initially founded in early 2008 to monitor and map post-election violence in Kenya.

To send Ushahidi information about the aftermath of Chile’s earthquake: International text message +44 7624802524/e-mail chile@ushahidi.com/Twitter #chile or #terremotochile. Information can also be submitted via the web.

- James Matthews

Listen to an audio interview with freelance journalist Annie Murphy in Concepción.

Sonson with sunglasses. Photo: Tamara Palinkat

Worldfocus associate producer Mohammad Al-Kassim spent five days in the Haitian capital one month after the devastating earthquake hit the impoverished Caribbean island. While he was at the University of Miami field hospital, he came across the story of Sonson, a young orphan.

Sonson is a Haitian boy who was found in a garbage dumpster two weeks after a calamitous earthquake hit his hometown of Port-au-Prince.

Salvation Army workers found Sonson and brought him to the University of Miami medical field hospital located near the airport in the Haitian capital. Doctors there treated Sonson for worms, bacteria, and superficial cuts on his foot. Despite the awful conditions he was found in, Sonson is in fairly good shape physically according to medical personnel.

No one seems to know the whereabouts of his parents or even his real age, which nurses at the hospital estimate  at about two or three. He is scheduled to undergo a hand x-ray soon to determine age by his bone development.

Sonson has a big following here; he’s especially popular with the ladies.

Tamara Palinkat, 38-year-old Canadian volunteer with the University of Miami’s Project Medishare, is in Port-au-Prince helping with the earthquake recovery efforts. She says that she took an immediate liking to Sonson, drawn to his survival instinct.

“The idea that this little fella was fending for himself at the age of 2 or 3 years old pulled at my heart strings,” said Tamara.

Tamara has no children of her own but says that she always knew that one day “a child would adopt me and that would be that.” She wants Sonson to be that child.

She has started the adoption paperwork process, registering Sonson as an unaccompanied child with UNICEF and making known her desire to adopt him. She also wrote a letter requesting approval from the Canadian Embassy.

Sonson feeds Tamara. Photo: Tamara Palinkat

Tamara is busy with her volunteer work but says she is spending as much time with Sonson as she can. Her face lights up when she talks about him.

According to Tamara, the little boy doesn’t have nightmares but does spend a lot of time lost in thought, staring in one direction for a long time as if reliving past events. Tamara says Sonson was very withdrawn at first but has slowly been coming out of his shell.

In the short time they have known each other, Sonson has become the center of Tamara’s world. She doesn’t know yet if her adoption bid for Sonson will be successful — for now, she is focusing on her volunteer work and staying hopeful.

- Mohammad Al-Kassim

Officials now say at least 723 people died, and 19 others are missing. Many survivors are left without water, food and power; Chile’s president has called it an emergency without parallel in the country’s history.

The city of Concepcion, not far from the quake’s epicenter, was especially hard hit. While the 8.8-magnitude quake itself caused many of the deaths, tsunamis that quickly followed may have killed hundreds in coastal towns.

For more on the earthquake’s impact on the Chilean economy, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Susan Segal, president and CEO of the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas.

And Mariana Sanchez of Al Jazeera English reports from Chile.

Santiago, Chile. Photo: Flickr user Luis Iturra

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Chile two days ago has resulted in over 700 confirmed deaths thus far and infrastructure damage throughout the country.

Tsunami warnings spread across the Pacific, as far away as Japan and Alaska. Chilean coastal towns and off-shore islands experienced tsunamis from the quake. Rescue efforts are underway and the military has been called in to fend off looters.

Blogs and social media sites have been addressing the disaster and the impact of the quake around the world.

Foreign Policy Blogs writer Richard Basas discusses the immediate impact of Chile’s earthquake, concerns in the coming days and the differences between Chile’s and Haiti’s ability to handle natural disasters:

The actual quake was felt as far as Buenos Aires, but the main concern now for non-Chileans has been a Tsunami effect that has already hit Chile and islands near the mainland of Chile and South America. So far the damage from Tsunami has been limited, but warning about possible Tsunamis have been issued as far as Mexico and Hawaii, and even as far as Asia. Some reports have come out about Tsunamis landing in Mexico and Central America, and countries closer to Chile’s quake like Peru and Colombia but information is limited at this point.

Chile was hit by the largest recorded earthquake in history at 9.0 in the same area of the country in 1960. Unlike Haiti, whose quake was unexpected as one had not occurred for over 200 years before 2010, Chile and its structures have been designed and built to withstand quakes, and emergency plans and sophisticated Search and Rescue equipment exists in Chile to deal with quakes that are well known in Chile. Aid efforts in Concepcion, a city of 670,000 people and the town very close to the quake zone, Talca, are underway as few structures, even those earthquake resistant one can withstand an 8.8 magnitude earthquake. People trapped under collapsed structures often were inside their homes as the earthquake occurred in the middle of the night while most were asleep in their homes.

While Chile’s earthquake was 500 times stronger than the earthquake that rocked Haiti just over a month ago, Chile’s death toll was much smaller. Global Voices blogger Silvia Viñas writes about the praise that Chile is receiving for its disaster preparedness:

Quakes are commonplace in Chile; since 1906 and counting this most recent earthquake, Chile has experienced 28 earthquakes [es]—without counting the smaller in magnitude but still frequent seismic activity that is often felt around the country. The three biggest earthquakes that many Chileans can still remember left 30,000 dead in 1939, 3,000 in 1960, and 177 in 1985.

The international community, together with Chileans living abroad, have praised Chile’s preparedness in front of this devastating situation, which could have had an even higher casualty total.

Chile is the world’s leading supplier of copper, but the country’s copper mines and seaports are struggling to get back to full capacity, after suffering damages and power outages from the quake. The price of copper rose over 5 percent when the markets opened on Monday, and over a fifth of the copper mine capacity was shut down, according to Reuters.

Gwen Robinson, of the Financial Times blog Alphaville, discusses the damage done to Chile’s infrastructure and its impact on global copper prices:

A crucial factor for Chile is its identity as one of the most quake-prone countries on the Pacific Rim. This, as the FT explains, has ensured the country is well prepared for big shocks, with building codes that require shake-resistant construction and a rapid emergency response system.

Chile’s top copper mines also managed to escape much damage because of such factors — though commodities markets still reacted to the earthquake with precautionary buying of the metal.

In an effort to calm commodities markets, Santiago Gónzalez, Chile’s mining minister, said on Sunday that the country would honor all export commitments, citing its ample copper stocks.

But that hasn’t stopped copper prices soaring by the biggest amount in nearly a year on Monday. amid fears of supply interruptions and infrastructure damage to Chile’s copper facilities.

Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have been used in Chile to get information and locate loved ones. Mashable’s Matt Silverman writes about one woman’s use of Twitter to track down her family member:

A woman was able to track down her missing sister-in-law today thanks to the help of a fellow Twitter user.

Earlier we posted some of the Chile earthquake pictures that Chileans have been sharing on Twitter of the devastation caused by this morning’s magnitude-8.8 earthquake. Many of our readers were moved, as we were, to see some of the destruction first-hand. But one reader, Sheryl Breuker, shared a personal story with us in the comments about the true power of social media in crisis situations.

Also on Mashable, CEO and founder Pete Cashmore, discusses the launch of Google’s new person finder:

The simple interface lets you choose between two options — “I’m looking for someone” and “I have information about someone,” then either query the database or enter new information. At the time of writing, the Person Finder app has 3,100 records.

Here are some Twitter posts about Chile today, some sharing information and others trying to locate people:

LisaTw RT @Baybe_Doll: #Chile #need help Building collapse - 52 families affected #loc Edificio Diego Portales

lluviafina RT @microsiervos: Google ofrece un servicio para la localización de víctimas del terremoto de Chile (@la_informacion) http://bit.ly/ccaD10 (citing Google’s new Person Finder service)

LaConqui #terremotochile SE BUSCA a Fernando Hormazabal y Lidia Concha de #Pellehue #chile Info al fono 02 - 3301412 (favor RT) #chileayuda (seeking info about missing persons)

A boy in Cite Soleil carries water. Photo: UN on Flickr

Survivors of the Haitian earthquake need quick solutions that may not come in time for the punishing rainy season that starts in May. They now face the looming threat of disease, misery in makeshift tent camps and a lack of adequate food and water.

Despite all the pledges of rebuilding, there are some basic realities: poor people will suffer and some will die.

Reports from the field show that relief agencies are pushing to make things better, with a deadline from the weather that is almost impossible to meet. Partners in Health, one prominent relief organization, reports that it has to shift priorities “to long-term care and helping the hundreds of thousands of people who urgently need shelter, water, sanitation, and food.

We hear the same concerns from journalists and from relief organizations all around Haiti. The Miami Herald reported on Feb. 24:

The stench of human waste permeates the air around the crude shelters made of sticks and sheets…There are nowhere near enough toilets — portables, latrines or any other kind — for the tens of thousands living in the camps in and around Port-au-Prince.

The squalid conditions have government and relief workers worried about a potential outbreak of deadly diseases, such as diarrhea, spread by unsanitary conditions. And relief agencies scrambling to install toilets are still figuring out how to later dispose of their waste.

Sad to say, but as many people have noted all along, Haiti cannot be handled simply by relief and rescue through normal means. Haiti needs international concerted crisis management –- and Haitians must be empowered to choose the leaders who will allow real, humane, no-nonsense, incorruptible change. Is that happening?

Partners in Health reported this: “With cities destroyed and major roadways and ports obstructed or damaged, food is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. The price of staples, like rice, oil, and beans, has risen dramatically. ‘Prices have skyrocketed – doubling and in some cases tripling,’ says Jesula Pierre, a PIH logistics coordinator currently working in Haiti’s Central Plateau.”

With its Haitian partner, the organization is pushing to plant fallow farmland and ratchet up farm yields. But each organization operating in Haiti can only do a small part to save as many people as possible.
It’s not enough. The list of problems goes on.

This is also from the Miami Herald:

Relief workers blame the shortage of toilets in part on having to deal with more urgent problems — like keeping people alive — immediately after the Jan. 12 earthquake…

But now, more than five weeks after the quake, the dangers of inadequate sanitation could amount to the most pressing public health issue.

At best, many Haitians had neither clean water or sanitation before the earthquake. They deserved help even before the earth shook.

Much more suffering is likely when the rains fall.

The aim is to relieve overcrowding in the makeshift camps where many of the one million-plus Haitians left homeless have been living.

But as Haiti continues to struggle five weeks after the quake, a few stories of hope are emerging as well. Steve Chao of Al Jazeera English reports from Haiti.

And although the story may be fading from the headlines, the crisis continues.

It’s an unfortunate reality that in any disaster, there are those who will seek to profit from the situation — a fact confirmed by allegations that some officials are rigging the system by which food and medicine are distributed.

Rob Reynolds of Al Jazeera English has more on the allegations of corruption:

Do reports of abuse make you less likely to donate to the Haitian relief effort?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

But increasingly the focus is on recovering the dead — and improving conditions for many hundreds of thousands just trying to get by.

Officials say that 200,000 people have left the ruined capital, reversing decades of migration into Port-au-Prince.

At the same time, there is a plan to move some 400,000 people from squalid camps to cleaner, safer tent cities on the outskirts of the capital.

Rob Reynolds of Al Jazeera English reports on the situation in the capital:

In the early 1990’s, tens of thousands of Haitians tried to escape economic hardship and political repression by heading to the U.S. on small boats. Most were intercepted and set back to Haiti.

After the earthquake, another generation of Haitians is boarding boats in search of a better life.

Tony Birtley of Al Jazeera English reports on these evacuees:

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

The threat of aftershocks has kept most inhabitants of Port-au-Prince out of their homes. People still left in the city spend the nights in makeshift sleeping compounds. Our German partner Deutsche Welle reports on the strong aftershock that hit early this morning.

Photo: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Michael Blanpied, USGS Earthquakes Hazards Program coordinator, gives an update on the current situation in Haiti. He talks about the expectations for continued aftershocks in the coming weeks. To listen to the U.S. Geological Survey’s latest podcast on Haiti with Blanpied click here.

Mark Turner, author of Dispatches from a Fragile Island shares his thoughts and personal experiences during the aftermath of the crisis.

Another awful day of bad news.

The full extent of the losses to our community is finally hitting home, as hope disappears.

This morning we learned of the death of the wonderful, vivacious Alexandra Duguay, whose house we visited only a couple of weeks ago. Also at that house party was Andrew Wyllie and family. Andrew survived, but we have learned his family did not…

It’s devastating. Everyone we met, every party we attended, everyone we had a meal with or invited over has either perished, or lost someone very close. And there is so much we still don’t know.

The fact that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has received a lot of attention since the earthquake. Haiti’s lack of resources and widespread poverty before the quake have made the current situation even more grave.

However, a more nuanced view of Haiti is often lacking. Richard André, a guest blogger for Americas Quarterly, discusses the culture and resilience of Haiti beyond the poverty. André was born in Queens, New York to Haitian parents.

Then, as now, the world and its news agencies are turning their attention to Haiti: a small country in the Caribbean that goes almost entirely unnoticed on a daily basis. That is, unless a crisis requiring foreign aid and intervention emerges, as most do. It is no surprise that upon hearing that my family is from Haiti, most Americans respond in an apologetic tone, saying that my country is sad and vulnerable and with an unfortunate past.

The “Haiti = poor” perspective, despite being a gross oversimplification, can be explained and exemplified by the coverage on every news channel immediately following the earthquake. Second to the fact that the earthquake happened, the most memorable piece of information that was repeated over and over is that “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” Though the poverty that has plagued Haiti and exacerbated these disasters is part of the country, it is also just that—only a part of a complex history and identity that is both proud and rich.

Experts give their views on how Haiti should rebuild the country and the best ways to supply aid in Foreign Policy.

In Haiti, neither relief nor reconstruction will be enough: Restoration should not be the goal. The earthquake is not the first natural catastrophe that Haiti has faced. In 2008, four hurricanes wreaked devastation. Since 1994, five major natural catastrophes, an average of one every three years, have hit Haiti’s population centers. Worse, these spikes of disaster have punctuated a long-term downward drift. To exit from this spiral, relief is not enough: A coordinated and targeted multibillion dollar Haiti fund now has to bring real hope of change to the country’s youth.

For raw, aerial footage of the devastation in Haiti watch the Associated Press report here:

Read what some people are saying about today’s aftershock on Twitter:

LeChantdOiseau Been another quake in #Haiti?

thatgirl_hannah Pray for haiti- big aftershock this morning, 6.1

blackmediascoop Its only been 8 days & HAITI gets hit AGAIN! A 6.1 mag “AFTERSHOCK” struck this morning. Experts say these aftershocks could last for MONTHS

-Geneva Sands-Sadowitz

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Arnold was in Haiti earlier this week.

Concern Worldwide has worked for 40 years on the front lines of some of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

Zeina Khodr of Al Jazeera English has more on the Haitian government:

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Keen also estimated that as many as 200,000 Haitians may have died after last week’s devastating 7.0 earthquake.

Although European nations today pledged another $500 million in aid, not nearly enough food or water is getting to residents of Port-au-Prince in desperate need.

Former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. Special Envoy for Haiti, arrived in the capital city today to help with the relief effort, as local authorities struggled to maintain control.

Worldfocus speaks with Dominic MacSorley, who is in Port-au-Prince with aid organization Concern Worldwide:

Photos courtesy of the United Nations on Flickr.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

We look not just at the present struggle but also at the future of the beleaguered country that has experienced so much hardship for so long.

Daljit Dhaliwal discusses the events in Haiti with Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at the New York Times and Garrick Utley, president of the Levin Institute at the State University of New York and former NBC News foreign correspondent.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

In this phone interview, she describes the scene there, as their team works to provide medical care in an environment of extreme hardship that includes piles of corpses 50 feet away from their command post.

Photos are from the International Medical Corps and UNPhoto on Flickr.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Aid is coming in — plenty of it — but damage to roads is severely affecting the distribution.

That should change as the first U.S. troops arrive and begin handing out food and water. By Monday, as many as 10,000 Americans will be in Haiti or offshore.

For more on the aid effort in Haiti, Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Jordan Ryan, the director of crisis prevention and recovery at the U.N. Development Program.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

A man injured by Port-au-Prince’s earthquake observes the Haitian government’s taxation building, reduced to a heap of rubble. Photo: UNPhoto

Visits to Haiti by American television cameras and images of suffering — juxtaposed with dramatic music and fancy logos or sad looks on the faces of U.S. politicians as they extend condolences — are not enough.

Sympathy is not enough.

Response to the earthquake in Haiti must be at a level the world has not seen. It is not clear that the message is getting through. Nor is it clear that Haiti will get what it deserves and needs: a new start and the equivalent of a Marshall Plan, war reparations that create a new reality in Haiti.

Already chaos makes small steps impossible. Correspondents in Port-au-Prince report despair, looting and fear of gangs.

Before the quake, the Haitian government functioned, but only thanks to occasional handouts and loans. But the poverty and squalor before last week was shattering and horrible. Now, the Haitian government is virtually obliterated. Survival for millions is at stake.

Words are not enough. Images are not enough.

The challenge for the world is to respond adequately. Neglectful and far from innocent in the progressive
erosion of institutions in Haiti, will the U.S., France and other countries step up now and bring real change?

The work of nonprofits and our individual contributions — crucial though they are — are not enough. We need to build infrastructure, empowering Haitians who are willing and able to act selflessly for the future of their country. And we need vast quantities of money and builders and planners and teachers and doctors.

Any recovery means starting from the beginning — international police and military units on the streets right away, probably led by the United States, to avoid the spread of violence. Next, infrastructure to rescue and treat people to avoid a crisis in which many more people die of injuries or lack of food and water.

Stability for Haiti will take time and endurance. Everything must now change.

- Peter Eisner

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

The images from Haiti are difficult to watch, especially for Haitians living abroad who are left to wonder about the fate of relatives and friends back home.

After the earthquake, life has become a struggle for many of those who survived the disaster.

Sebastian Walker of Al Jazeera English has more from Port-au-Prince:

And, while most of the attention is focused on getting help into the Port-au-Prince area, there is another part of the equation. Some of the injured are making their way across Hispaniola to the Dominican Republic.

Rob Reynolds of Al Jazeera English has more:

We invite you to give us your reflections on the tragedy unfolding in Haiti.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please be respectful and on-point. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

A growing international rescue effort struggles to save the injured from dying, and aid organizations say that as many as three million people — a third of Haiti’s population — may be in need of help.

Port-au-Prince’s airport is the hub for humanitarian aid arriving from overseas — supplies as well as rescue teams. Worldfocus spoke with Laura Blank, who just arrived in Port-au-Prince to work with the relief group World Vision.

Watch our audio slideshow with Laura’s observations about the situation and photos from around the capital:

Images courtesy of UNPhoto and Coast Guard on Flickr, as well as Gwenn Goodale Mangine and Agencia Brasil.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.