P.S. For missing family, please call the State Department hotline at 1-888-407-4747. To submit or request situation or survivor information, visit http://haiti.ushahidi.com/Click on Haiti label (at the end of this report) for updates and reports on missing persons in Haiti and Haitian Earthquake Registry.
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From: President Bill Clinton, Clinton Foundation
Subject: Your help is urgently needed in Haiti
Ingrid,
Today, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti who are recovering from a devastating earthquake. Buildings have collapsed, thousands of people are missing, and many are presumed homeless.
My UN office and the rest of the UN system are monitoring the situation. While we don't yet know the full impact of this 7.0-magnitude earthquake, we do know that the survivors need immediate help.
There's a way you can help Haiti recover and rebuild right now.
Click here to make a donation and find information on other organizations providing emergency relief efforts.
Approximately 2 million people live in the capital of Haiti and the surrounding areas where the disaster struck.
What we do in these first 48 hours determines how many lives we can save. Together, we can help communities get back on their feet.
I have long been committed to helping Haiti "build back better" from the 2008 hurricanes and prepare for future disasters. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, now needs our assistance more than ever.
Help provide immediate relief and long-term support to earthquake survivors by making a donation today:
www.clintonfoundation.org/haitirelief
Thank you for joining me in praying for the people of Haiti and bringing hope to the survivors. Working together, we can help them build back stronger and better.
Bill Clinton
UN Special Envoy for Haiti
P.S. For missing family, please call the State Department hotline at 1-888-407-4747. To submit or request situation or survivor information, visit http://haiti.ushahidi.com/.
[end of e-mail copy]
Click on Haiti label (here below) for updates and reports on missing persons in Haiti and Haitian Earthquake Registry.
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UPDATE - From The New York Times, 14 Jan 2010:
FROM AROUND THE WEB
SUDAN WATCH
UN Special Envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton says to submit or request situation or survivor information, visitHUFFINGTON POST
Bill Clinton, UN Chief, Wyclef Visit Haiti In Effort To Bring Attention To Impoverished NationWONKETTE
George W. Bush to Save HaitiNEWTEEVEE
Haiti Earthquake Videos: The Devastation As Seen on YouTubePOLITICAL ANIMAL
Obama more effective on spending cuts
UPDATE - On Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 17:13 pm GMT UK:
UN says Haiti is the worst situation the organisation has ever faced
News just in via e-mail from UK Channel 4 News
Snowmail by Alex Thomson on Saturday, January 16, 2010 - excerpt:
Greetings to you - Alex T here (tweet @alextomo) with the way things stack up for tonight's Channel 4 News and note - we are at 6.05 this evening.- - -
The United Nations spokesman said today that Haiti is the worst situation the organisation has ever faced.
So in the official opinion of the UN we are looking at the worst humanitarian disaster since 1945.
Aid is only beginning, very slowly of course, to filter out into the wrecked streets of Port-au-Prince.
The Haitian government has handed control of the national airport formally to the United States until further notice.
The fleets of helicopters aboard US naval vessels offshore will become critical to delivering aid into areas where approach roads are blocked and there are many of them.
Here the UK DEC appeal raced past the £10m mark in just 24 hours and as I write, it exceeds £12m.
And of course all the time people are being brought from the rubble. There are stories of small children emerging alive after several days - as in all quakes - and these will continue for some time no doubt, against all apparent odds.
The search for that other thing - a credible figure for the number of people killed, becomes increasingly futile in the sheer chaos and need to get bodies into mass burial pits as fast as possible in the tropical heat.
Suffice to say we are talking in tens of thousands, many tens of thousands. Haiti's interior minister says between 100 and 200,000 have been killed. But he has no real idea, and nor has anybody else.
Looting and sporadic gunfire has been reported around Port-au-Prince today and the UN is considering sending a makeshift police force of up to 5,000 should real security issues arise on the streets.
Our two teams on the ground will bring us up-to-date tonight along with interviews from aid organisations at work there and here, we speak to the Haitian community as they attempt to get news from their loved ones.
TV crew rescues toddler in Haiti: http://bit.ly/5GIrQh
Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Haiti Earthquake Appeal
DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal online at www.dec.org.uk
Click here for latest at BBC News - Haiti Earthquake 2010.
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UPDATE - On Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 18:08 pm GMT UK:
JON SNOW WRITES FROM HAITI
News just in via e-mail from UK Channel 4 News
Snowmail by Jon Snow on Sunday, January 17, 2010 - excerpt:
Channel 4 News comes to you live tonight from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.READ THE LATEST BLOGS
They have buried 25,000 bodies so far.
It's estimated 100,000-200,000 people have now died and some are still dying.
Aid is beginning to come in by the planeload but distrbution is still very difficult.
As I write, a massive jumbo cargo plane is landing on the runway.
There are blackhawk helicopters in the sky above me.
American troops are on the ground but as yet in small numbers and there is a political row brewing.
Some aid agencies have complained their flights were redirected to enable Hillary Clinton to land
Sarah Smith will be handling that end of the Haiti crisis.
Being Sunday, I have been to the wreckage of the cathedral here in Port-au-Prince.
The face of Christ survives in the shattered rose window and almost the only thing intact otherwise is a white bone crucifix outside.
I have talked to beggars who were gathered outside the cathedral. I have talked to others who saw it come down.
We have also been to the burial pit where thousands of bodies are being bundled out of the city in dumper trucks.
They cascade out of the trucks, somehow neutered and inanimate until you see the body of a baby thrown clear and there he lies in the grass, a symbol of humanity's abject loss.
Tonight on Channel 4 News we will be talking to the United Nations here in Haiti and to a doctor from Medecins Sans Frontieres, which is struggling to save lives.
We will be on air at 7.30pm tonight.
Jon
TWEET ALL ABOUT IT
Join the Channel 4 News conversation:
www.twitter.com/channel4news
CHANNEL 4 NEWS SERVICES
Online: Watch our video reports at:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1529573111
From CHANNEL 4 NEWS teams of reporters making their way to Haiti: http://bit.ly/6Wp6df
HOW THE HAITI STORY IS BEING TOLD ONLINE
Tweets from CHANNEL 4 NEWS: How the #Haiti story is being told online: http://bit.ly/5TghGy & the search for survivors via Twitter: http://bit.ly/891kdi Help Haiti
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Secretary Clinton Announces Launch of State.Gov Person Finder Tool for Those Missing in Haiti - Press Release - From US Department of State, January 15, 2010 - excerpt:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today the launch of a new tool on www.state.gov, the “Person Finder,” to allow people to find and share information on missing loved ones in Haiti. The tool can be found at http://www.state.gov/haitiquake.- - -
UPDATE - On Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 18:03 pm GMT UK:
News just in via e-mail from Channel 4 News, UK:
Haiti: water purification gets serious
Snowmail by Alex Thomson on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - excerpt:
Greetings all. Alex T here with the way it's all beginning to shake down for tonight's Channel 4 News (tweet @alextomo).- - -
As the DEC appeal roars past the £25m mark, we still think Haiti is the strongest issue and story for us tonight. As I write, the US commander of the military effort on the ground is speaking. Water purification gets serious as from today - tomorrow sees the arrival of a hospital ship offshore from Port-au-Prince.
Things are certainly moving in all kinds of ways, but the logistical obstacles and the scale of it all remain daunting and are slowing things down.
Agencies on the ground, and the US commander, are growing doubtful now of finding anybody else alive. He says US forces have not found anybody alive for the past two days. But we know that earthquakes always surprise us with the endurance of the human spirit. We may yet be further surprised.
3,500 more UN peacekeepers are due into Haiti in the coming days to secure the aid distribution, though in truth the issue of security has not been the concern that some thought it might be.
Haiti receives US air drops: http://bit.ly/5JkmDx
Haiti – are the images too explicit?: http://bit.ly/6kolNF
See my blog post at Congo Watch today, Tuesday, January 19, 2010: BBC News says DR Congo offers help to Haitians - Senegal offers free land to any Haitians who want to "return" to Africa.
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UPDATE - On Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 17:40 pm GMT UK:
News just in via e-mail from Channel 4 News, UK - excerpt:
HAITI QUAKE AFTERSHOCK
From Jon, Jon and Sarah and their teams in Haiti, another traumatic day, heightened by at least one powerful aftershock. This as US plans to get a hospital ship in place with appropriate helicopter uplift take shape.
Haiti hit by earthquake aftershock:http://bit.ly/6xGyAD
