Can't some company donate a few thousand sledge hammers, pick axes, pry bars and shovels to Haiti?

[ddeclue]

The most basic tools they need right now are sledge hammers, pick axes, shovels and pry bars - if they could get a lot of these into Haiti they would help tremendously to break up the concrete and get people out.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Recovery phase, RECOVERY PHASE

also having done this confined space, you move something wrong, and you drop this on you and your victim.

But we are now at the recovery phase, mostly.

This means body recover phase.

[Swede]

4. Dehydration and renal failure is the enemy now.

Time is just about up.

[ddeclue]

6. Probably another 3 to 4 days unless they have access to water or food.

There were people trapped in a grocery store recovered today in relatively good health because they had access to food.

[Swede]

9. I saw that. How lucky-unlucky can you get?

Trapped in a collapsed building from an earthquake,but it's full of food and drink.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. That's my choice the soda aile, nuts and soda

One of the guys they pulled said he'd been eating peanut butter and jelly

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Yep and the call will be done soon

I read in the Mexican press they were doing one last sector search, all teams in their sector...

They are about to declare it over... but a few rescues drove them to do one last search.

I'd hate to be the one making the decision to fully go into recovery.

[ddeclue]

5. So far only 75 people have been recovered by official rescue teams

there are tens of thousands probably still alive under the rubble for at least another 3 or 4 days - yes some will die by not being uber careful but it is better than to lose them all and only recover 140 people alive by leaving it solely to the S&R guys.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. No, and actually 75 is a high number for these things

...

Look it is heart wrenching but the picks would have been useful perhaps a day after, not now.

Those rare saves, miracles, will come now in places where the patient somehow managed to get some water or some food... chiefly water. Renal and organ failure.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. The problem isn't the lack of tools, or people.

It's the enormous difficulty of getting the tools and equipment and people to the right places. The airport can't handle all the traffic and the port is too damaged for ships to dock. That, not the lack of donated equipment, is the problem.

[underpants]

8. They need front-end-loaders and earth-moving equipment

yes shovels would work but realize how poor they are-they don't HAVE shovels and picts and axes. That is poor really poor.

[ddeclue]

11. that's what I'm saying...

[XemaSab]

14. It reminds me of this heartbreaking article from a few years ago:

A boy named Alone Banda works in this purgatory six days a week.

Nine years old, nearly lost in a hooded sweatshirt with a skateboarder on the chest, he takes football-size chunks of fractured rock and beats them into powder.

Lacking a hammer, he uses a thick steel bolt gripped in his right hand.

In a good week, he says, he can make enough powder to fill half a bag.

His grandmother, Mary Mulelema, sells each bag, to be used to make concrete, for 10,000 kwacha, less than $3. Often, she said, it is the difference between eating and going hungry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/world/africa/24zambia.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=africa%20rocks%20bolt&st=cse

--------------------------

The idea that a child would have to use a bolt to pound rocks to feed his family says everything you need to know about poverty in Africa, and I assume the same would go for parts of Haiti.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Only if they don't drop them from aircraft.

eom.

[timeforpeace]

13. Why is she here, lecturing us, instead of there if she's so smart?

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Self delete, who cares?

...

[ddeclue]

16. who is the "she" in this discussion?

:shrug:

[jxnmsdemguy65]

17. You'll have to ask China and India...

all those sorts of things are made in those countries now.