A portrait of girl in the SOS social center in Cap Haitien Haiti.
The earthquake seemed to follow a malignant design. It struck the metropolitan area where almost a third of Haitis nine million people live. It flattened the headquarters of the United Nations mission, which would have taken the lead in coördinating relief, and killed dozens of U.N. employees, including, reportedly, the mission chief, Hédi Annabi. In a country without a building code, it wiped out whole neighborhoods of shoddy concrete structures, took down hospitals, wrecked the port, put the airports control tower out of action, damaged key institutions from the Presidential Palace to the National Cathedral, killed the archbishop and senior politicians, cut off power and phone service, and blocked passage through the streets. There was almost no heavy equipment in the capital that could be used to move debris off trapped survivors, or even to dig mass graves. Everything is going wrong, Guy LaRoche, a hospital manager, said.
- Lisa
The earthquake seemed to follow a malignant design. It struck the metropolitan area where almost a third of Haitis nine million people live. It flattened the headquarters of the United Nations mission, which would have taken the lead in coördinating relief, and killed dozens of U.N. employees, including, reportedly, the mission chief, Hédi Annabi. In a country without a building code, it wiped out whole neighborhoods of shoddy concrete structures, took down hospitals, wrecked the port, put the airports control tower out of action, damaged key institutions from the Presidential Palace to the National Cathedral, killed the archbishop and senior politicians, cut off power and phone service, and blocked passage through the streets. There was almost no heavy equipment in the capital that could be used to move debris off trapped survivors, or even to dig mass graves. Everything is going wrong, Guy LaRoche, a hospital manager, said.
Yet Haitian political culture has a long history of insularity, corruption, and violence, which partly explains why Port-au-Prince lies in ruins. If, after an earthquake that devastated rich and poor neighborhoods alike, Haitis political and business élites resurrect the old way of fratricidal self-seeking, they will find nothing but debris for spoils. Disasters on this scale reveal something about the character of the societies in which they occur. The aftermath of the 2008 cyclone in Burma not only betrayed the callous indifference of the ruling junta but demonstrated the vibrancy of civil society there. Haitis earthquake shows that, whatever the communal spirit of its people at the moment of crisis, the government was not functioning, unable even to bury the dead, much less rescue the living. This vacuum, which had been temporarily filled by the U.N., now poses the threat of chaos.
Both quotes from SUFFERING by George Packer in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/01/25/100125taco_talk_packer#ixzz0hU7nHGTT
- Will
The sun shinning in the schoolyard at the SOS school yard in Poá in the state of São Paulo, Brazil.
São Paulo, the capital of the state of São Paulo, is the largest city in Brazil with over 18 million people in its metro area.
Founded in 1554 by the Jesuits, the city bloomed to gigantic proportions in the 20th century. Money from coffee exports, once the main activity of the State, boosted industrialization and attracted immigrants from many countries, especially Italy. The immigrants' influence was so strong that even today the Paulistas (São Paulo's natives) speak Portuguese with a peculiar accent. Japanese immigration is also very important, the local colony being the world's largest outside Japan.
Like any big city in a developing country, São Paulo is constantly jammed by its 7.48 million cars; but for the fortunate the helicopter is becoming an alternative, with a fleet of nearly 500 choppers (second only to Tokyo). This leads to a distinctive characteristic of the city's architecture, for most of the new skyscrapers include helipads.
The history of the Brazilian skyscraper began with São Paulo's Prédio Martinelli in 1929, which initiated a thorough verticalization of the city. By 1959 the old Downtown was crowded with buildings. From the 1960s the center for new skyscrapers moved south to Paulista Avenue. Situated at the highest point in town at 80 meters, buildings on Paulista appear taller from the surrounding areas. In the 1990s with Paulista already saturated, development moved south again to Berrini Avenue and Pinheiros Freeway in the Brooklin region.
With strict land occupation laws São Paulo's skyscrapers are not very tall, with the old Mirante do Vale just topping 170 m. But the number of buildings over 80 meters is so huge that skyscrapers have become the defining feature of the city.
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