Why don't they just put the fucking water on the ground and let the Haitians get it themselves!

[Joanne98]

This is getting ridiculous! If this turns out to be a "it's not safe" issue they're going to get screamed at forever!

[NYC_SKP]

1. For that matter, Haiti is SURROUNDED BY WATER!!11!! Why don't they just...

put in desalination plants, drop 'em in by helicopter and BAM, problem solved.

:sarcasm:

I'm gonna guess that some very professional groups and individuals are working around the clock to help the Haitians.

I'm gonna guess that they know what they're doing, and that there are reasons that some things can't be don't in ways we think they should.

And that they know one hell of a lot more about it than 99.9% of people on discussion boards.

Just a guess.

[HughMoran]

71. Just a guess

Arguing with a rageaholic is not likely to achieve any concessions. :eyes:

[jwirr]

2. I the past putting it out on the ground means "gangs" the kid with the

machetes control the supply. Not a good situation.

[BeFree]

19. They already do

Any water that is there is theirs, then.

So what you do is flood the place with water. A shortage of water means that only the strongest get it. So, end the shortage and everyone gets water. Really quite simple.

[GreenStormCloud]

3. The strongest would take the water and the children and elderly would get none.

In case you haven't seen the newsclips, there are gangs of young men who are armed with machetes roaming the streets. They would get ALL of the water.

[KittyWampus]

4. Rescue groups are professionals who know what they are doing. There is a reason why

they do this and not that.

[cali]

5. The Vinson crew has delivered thousands of bottles of water and energy drinks

[Pirate Smile]

21. If there isn't a camera crew with them then it gets treated like it never happened.

I can see why they let reporters tag along now. If they don't then they just report that nothing is happening and no one is getting any help.

[laughingliberal]

64. Yes. and they have the capacity to desalinize water.

I'm tired of the armchair disaster response teams here.

[postulater]

6. Cuz if it is fucking water, I imagine everyone would want as much as they can get.

But if the erection lasts more than four hours they will have to see a doctor.

[pipi_k]

7. It would cause/enable total chaos

If you think things are bad now with people being pissed off, just watch what would happen if supplies were to be set out for the taking.

Massive rioting. Something this ravaged country doesn't need on top of everything else.


:(

[Joanne98]

8. Fucking safety nazis! If the aid workers are afraid of the victims then they should just

GET THE FUCK OUT!

They're screwing up everything. Fucking cowards!

Security concerns cause doctors to leave hospital, quake victims

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Critically injured earthquake victims watched doctors and nurses walk away from a field hospital Friday night after United Nations officials ordered a medical team to evacuate the area out of security concerns.

Saturday morning the U.N. allowed the medical personnel to return, said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent.

Gupta was the only doctor left on Friday night with the 25 earthquake victims -- some of them critically ill. He said he assessed their needs, but with no supplies, he said there was little he could do to treat them.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/index.html

[madrchsod]

10. they are supposed to fight back with what? a scalpel?

[Lasher]

11. For the record breaking on CNN - the UN did not order doctors to leave.

The doctors in question were from Belgium, it seems.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7479489

[WolverineDG]

13. THEN GO THERE YOURSELF & SHOW THEM HOW IT'S DONE

Since you are obviously THE world expert on rescue operations, why the fuck are you sitting in your comfortable home, with running water & electricity, bragging about your abilities on DU, when there are relief organizations in Haiti running around like chickens with their heads cut off?

:sarcasm:

Of course you're not there. You might break a nail or something.

dg

[Retired AF Dem]

30. +1000

[Itchinjim]

34. Amen DG

[11 Bravo]

36. Ouch! That's going to leave a (richly deserved) mark!

[proteus_lives]

56. Flawless Victory.

Well done.

[laughingliberal]

69. +1000 nt

[HughMoran]

72. [phone] 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

Dear God these internet 'experts' on all issues make me fucking ill!

:puke:

[votingupstart]

20. there is a lot of stupid in your post

THINK -- apparently you have never been desperate for food or water or shortsightedness, people get trampled to death in Wal-Marts for a 50% off coupon, can you think what would happen if the supplies needed for you to live were set out in a free-for-all manner.

riots, trampling, theft, hoarding, looting, death, etc, etc, etc -- don't worry though, your safe in front of your keyboard playing armchair general.

[iamjoy]

25. Good Point

about the store worker trampled to death for stuff no one really needed.

We should also remind any one who wants to look down upon the Haitians as animals for looting and rioting in the aftermath of the tragedy that Americans have gotten physically violent over toys. What's the justification for that? At least the Haitians have the "excuse" of needing to survive. I realize not all looting is for survival items, but I figure just as trauma and tragedy brings out the best in some people, it brings out the worst in others.

[pipi_k]

38. Another good point!

Americans getting hurt over toys.

Shit...back in the 80s I remember people getting injured over those stupid Cabbage Patch Kids dolls.


Oh, and then there's the complete bizarre-ness of prospective brides clawing at each other over wedding dresses on sale in Macy's or Filenes. Dresses they'll wear for one fucking day.



And, knowing that happens, some people believe we're supposed to just set out some food and water and NOT expect rioting on a mass scale from people who are deadly desperate.


oy...what planet do these people live on?

[arthritisR_US]

50. +1! n/t

[RoyGBiv]

24. Don't you have anything else better to do?

I think you should go there and set 'em all straight. Obviously your superior knowledge and ability to scream will make everything better.

[Pavulon]

28. Find a revolver, place one round in the chamber

spin. You are just taking a chance right. If it were to fire and it was placed against your temple you would die. These are real people operating on the ground. If you "secure" a position with troops you will place them in the position to defend it. That is done by shooting people.

That is not the desired outcome. You guys need to chill the fuck out and think before you post.

[pipi_k]

37. It's not about being cowards

It's about not wanting to make an already horrible situation even worse.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather not see moms with little kids trying to get food or water being trampled or beaten to death in the riot that must inevitably happen.


And yeah...there's also the worry over being injured themselves. What good is a dead hero? Someone who tried, but failed, to save one person. He and the person he tried to save get killed, and there goes whatever help he could have given to a hundred people who might have lived.


I know this sounds a little sarcastic, but whatever...if you have all the answers, why don't you go to Haiti and tell them all what to do? Go ahead and put your own life in danger and come back and tell us how it worked out for ya.


sigh...

[murray hill farm]

43. it is not anger that these folks are feeling and

acting out. It is desperation and the will to survive that is getting acted out. We would behave the same. Getting them the water and supplies is the answer in restoring civility.

[havocmom]

44. So, when do you & your naivety ship out?

:eyes:

[proteus_lives]

57. Wow, you're a keyboard warrior.

I'd like to see how brave you are when facing a berserk, starved, wounded man with a machete.

[Spazito]

65. The UN did NOT order the doctors out...

CNN fucked up yet again:

"U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said Saturday that the world body's mission in Haiti did not order any medical team to leave the Port-au-Prince field hospital. If the team left, it was at the request of their own organizations, he told CNN."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/16/haiti.abandoned.patients/index.html?hpt=T2

[laughingliberal]

67. Ah, easy to sit here in comfort and decide that, eh?

I know there are 7000 RN's from around the country signed up to volunteer for the efforts in Haiti. Right now they are trying to coordinate transportation for the first teams to be deployed and to arrange some security for them. Most of the nurses I know who have volunteered (myself included) would gladly swim over and get to it but I'm not sure it would be helpful as it would just mean dead or injured nurses who won't be much help.

[WolverineDG]

9. Because if they did all hell would break loose

& armchair quarterbacks like you would then be whining about how the US is so horrible, how could they just put the water on the ground & let the Haitians get it themselves without providing any security.

:eyes:

dg

[MineralMan]

12. Because experience has taught relief workers that that doesn't work.

Sometimes, we are so naive. We assume that people everywhere are just as reasonable in a time as crisis as we all think we would be. The reality is that we're not all that reasonable, either, under such circumstances.

Security is needed in crisis situations if the resources are to be fairly distributed.

[crispini]

14. Good way to cause a riot!

WTG!

[WolverineDG]

16. the stupidity in this thread is strong

jeepers. You don't even do something like that in the US after a hurricane.

dg

[COLGATE4]

15. I'm sick to death of these armchair quarterbacks

pontificating about how they would 'solve' the almost impossible relief effort which is being undertaken in Haiti right now. Their responses on this and other DU threads go from the merely stupid to the absolutely ridiculous. Unfortunately, these posts say more about the authors than about the actual situation. :mad:

[WolverineDG]

17. Maybe we should have a fund raising drive

to buy them all tickets to Haiti so they can show the world how it's done?

dg

[havocmom]

45. I'm in for $20. Paypal or Send the Stupid Fund for Armchair Relief Workers?

[WolverineDG]

58. Not sure we'll need that much

have you heard back from any of these "experts" since we challenged them to put up or shut up? I haven't.

Maybe it's because they took our advice & are now on their way to Haiti.



But I doubt it.
dg

[snagglepuss]

23. Exactly nt

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Obamanaut]

22. It is said that in the US a very few have most of the money. Put two

pallets of bottled water on the ground amongst hundreds of thirsty and hungry survivors, only a few would have any - the strongest, the most wicked, the greediest.

The frail, the weak, the children - they would do without and probably perish.

[stray cat]

26. Lets promote a free for all fight - perfect capitalism - the strong win the weak die

and actually there is water and gas in Haiti if you have enough money - our food and water drops would at least help those worthy capitalists who could get to the drops and hoard it or resell it! It sure worked well for aid to Somalia.

After all Americans kill each other inadvertently to get into a shopping mall opening for sales.

[cali]

27. this post's for you and

and all the other keyboard warriors making incredible assholes out of themselves.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7479650

[butterfly77]

29. I have been saying this for two days now..

They also have helicopters flying around,which could drop medications at these hospitals or high trauma areas they already know about and have flown over.

[cali]

32. and you know that they're not doing that? No, you don't know shit

anymore than the rest of us, dear. I know this is difficult for some of you to grasp, but not everyone doing aid work there has a camera crew attached.

[Pavulon]

31. Hey jerky, what happens when we "secure" a position

I can tell you from my NG time in eastern nc after disasters and from bosnia. At home MPs acted with LEO authority granted by the governor. They could arrest looters (rare) or if threatened with force fire on a person (did not happen). Time spent evacuating people later bringing in water and supplies.

Outside the US if we "secure" a position and defend it, that defend part is not done with hugs and kisses. You are placing troops in a position against starving hungry people and any error or act of desperation could lead to people being fired on, not arrested.

Standing down will GENERALLY work better here unless there is no other choice. I do NOT want to see our guys forced to fire on a desperate crowd.

[lunatica]

33. Port Au Prince is the size of Chicago only with steep hills covered with slums

The slums are the hardest hit but there are no roads into them. If you saw the chase scene in Rio de Janeiro in the recent Hulk movie you get an idea of how impossible it would be to go there, especially with everything destroyed. Try to imagine Chicago's 3 million inhabitants homeless and desperate. Hospitals, schools and buildings and all forms of transportation are destroyed. Bridges connecting the city are destroyed. The ports are destroyed. Streets are blocked by fallen debris so you can't drive around and you have to import all forms of vehicles, including helicopters. Imagine all the cities around Chicago are also destroyed in the same way only they aren't making the news because Chicago is the focus of attention.

The relief workers aren't pretending to be trying to deliver the necessary water and food. They aren't lagging behind out of laziness or because they don't want to help anyone.

The fact is that this is a huge and overwhelming situation which is a logistics nightmare with everything going against it. Location, poverty, arquitecture, heat and the near total destruction of everything.

[randr]

35. The scale of the situation

is making it hard to focus.
Far more people are being helped than not.
Far more people are helping each other through this than we can imagine.

[Toots]

39. When I was in Vietnam water was delivered by helicopter in huge rubber bladders

held about a thousand gallons each and they were everywhere. Don't understand why it has to be bottled water..

[pipi_k]

41. I'm thinking that maybe it's because people who have lost everything

have nothing to PUT that unbottled water in.


Plus...imagine the chaos...desperate people who don't have water containers actually jumping into those huge 1000 gallon rubber bladders. It's not like they have military training and have been taught to act in an orderly manner. It would be chaos.

And people would probably be covered in dust and blood and maybe with infected wounds as well.


Perfect way to spread disease...

[happy_liberal]

60. +10000

They obviously have better ways to do things, but they probably have a contract with coke to buy their water.

[Stinky The Clown]

40. If there is not enough for everyone and if it is uncontrolled, it will lead to riots and violence

..... and maybe killings.

[murray hill farm]

42. Why don't they drill some wells!

Can they get water from the ground? This might not help for today, but it seems if well were drilled around the edges of the city and all around Haiti to use as community wells, it could help rather quickly and be there for future use for all.

[havocmom]

47. Wells aren't so swell everyplace on the globe. Haiti has problems with water

Deforest ion leads to erosion, and that is not just about dirt in the air and stream beds, it effects underground water supplies. Without trees in hilly or mountainous regions, aquifers are hard to hold because soil is hard to hold. Water just runs away, downhill, in this case, to the ocean? People are hungry so they remove trees to plant food crops. Short term, stop gap solution that leads to bigger long term problems.

Frontline article mentions the increase in population at the urban center in past five decades. The springs that used to supply enough water for about 200,000 people then are not enough to supply the two+ million in the area now.

Add the results of deforestation to the mix and the water available to the springs (which are not enough for the current population to start with) and you have a nation that is thirsty under normal circumstances.


http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/haiti/environment.html

According to the World Health Organization, roughly 98 percent of Haiti is now deforested. "The forests are state-owned, but the state is a bad manager and lets the peasants invade," said environmentalist Jean-Andre Victor.

...

As the rains wash down the mountains, soil clogs clean-running streams that feed lakes and springs. L'Etang Bois Neuf, a lake about an hour outside of Port-au-Prince, has completely disappeared, leaving a traditional fishing community to eke out a living by farming dusty patches of land. "I used to live well. I could send my kids to school. But now it is not possible," said former fisherman Alex Maislen.

Another victim of the soil erosion is the country's aquifers, or underground water sources. Aquifers are replenished through the absorption of rainwater, but without topsoil and trees, sufficient amounts of water cannot be absorbed, and much of the rainwater runs off into the sea.

Just as less water is coming into the aquifer, the demand for water is exploding, particularly in the urban centers. Fifty years ago, Port-au-Prince's 18 springs supplied clean water to a population of approximately 200,000. Today, the capital has an estimated 2.5 million residents -- nearly a third of Haiti's population -- giving the country one of the highest rates of urbanization in the world.

Drill for water? There isn't much to drill for, evidently.

[murray hill farm]

62. Thanks for responding.

It was so simple a solution that I feared that the answer would be what it is...even more simply that wells are not the answer. I live in the boonies and do have a well...so it was my first thought. My water from the well often has pieces of shale or dirt in it and it often smells of sulpher, but it is safe to drink. So far anyway! I wish it was the answer for Haiti too.

[havocmom]

70. Boonie dweller myself but my big brother spent time in that part of the world

He mentioned the water catch systems on roofs in Jamacia that people use to save rain for drinking. I got to thinking about that re Haiti and did some looking.

Havocdad is a biologist/forester so he knows what happens when trees get removed. Says the best thing to do to improve weather in any place would probably be to plant trees, then plant some more trees, and keep planting trees, but in a way that encourages biodiversity and healthy symbiotic relationships between plants, 'shrooms, and basic conditions.

When trees are gone, hell is on the way.

[piedmont]

52. Imagine every 10,000 gallon gasoline and diesel underground tank in that city.

Now think of what happens to those rusty, already-leaking tanks when the ground around them shakes hard enough to destroy every building above. Now imagine drinking the water 100 ft or so directly under those tanks. Have a nice imaginary afterlife.

[murray hill farm]

68. Just a thought.

A simplistic one for sure, but hey! If it is not feasible, it is not feasible!

[Hugabear]

46. Good point. We should invade the island and secure it first.

Before we do anything, we should send in about 100,000 troops to secure the island, disarm the gangs, and restore order.

By the way, that is complete :sarcasm:

[Richardo]

48. When does your flight leave?

Get out there and show the experienced professionals how the know-it-all amateurs do it!! :yourock:

[Canuckistanian]

49. I was about to ask the same thing

Obviously not a well thought out post.

[Little Star]

51. I'll trust General Honore'. He basically said last night that

logistics and security issues all have work-arounds. He said this is unacceptable, period. The commenter's in this thread are showing themselves to be ignorant. They seem to be believing the same MSM they usually view with a jaundiced eye. Your post is spot on Joanne98. They should find themselves a you-tube of what the General said on Anderson Cooper last night. Then they should use their head, then they should come back to this thread and admit they didn't have the whole story and they fell for MSM bullshit!

[WolverineDG]

59. Then you & General Honore' should be on your way to Haiti

instead of yakking it up from the comforts of home.

dg

[nadinbrzezinski]

61. The part the good general is not telling you

is that by the time he went in, HE HAD a full security contingent and HAD TO GIVE orders to his troops to keep their muzzles down.

What do you think those troops were there for?

Fun and games?

I agree with him that the Superdome should have been reached before it was... but the General is forgetting that little detail. When he finally penetrated the zone, he had a full force backing him.

Don't believe me? Go look for info on the web.

[sandnsea]

66. Port au Prince = 3 mil, Katrina = 100,000

General Honore' doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

[nadinbrzezinski]

53. Give some money and realize

there is a book already written for this and a way to do this.

If you don't believe me get involved in rescue and relief for the NEXT TIME.

This time, give money... and chill.

[WilliamPitt]

54. (facepalm)

[proteus_lives]

55. Because it's anarchy.

Only groups with weapons would get the water.

Edit: Drive-By! The OP hiding from the ignorance of her post.

[Maru Kitteh]

63. pssst. I have a super-secret message for you....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7479650

[chowder66]

73. 4000 + escaped prisoners....