The magnitude 7.0 earthquake centered near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The situation is chaotic, communications systems are down, and debris impedes movement around the city. The U.N. estimates that 2.2 million people are affected and fears that the loss of life may reach into the tens of thousands.
Major news outlets are all reporting severe devastation, with extensive damage to hospitals, roads, water and sanitation services, and electrical and communication systems. An alarming number of buildings, including the National Palace and the United Nation’s Headquarters, have collapsed.
Haiti is the Western Hemisphere’s most impoverished and least-developed nation. Its society is rife with radical inequality, where large numbers of the population are systematically left out. Eighty percent of the population lives in poverty. These are the very people likely to suffer the most during this crisis.
Many people live day-to-day on what they’re able to earn in the informal sector. For those hundreds of thousands of poor people in Port-au-Prince, the daily struggle for food, water, and medical attention already amounted to an emergency — the earthquake has made these challenges infinitely more difficult to overcome, creating a humanitarian disaster on top of an existing humanitarian crisis.
