On the web

Citation

(2010), "On the web", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 19 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2010.07319dag.001

On the web

Article Type: On the web From: Disaster Prevention and Management, Volume 19, Issue 4

“While Haitian resilience has been duly recognized around the world, few appear to be interested in talking to Haitians about how to rebuild their communities and how the billions likely to be pledged to their country will be used” – Loune Viaud of Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health in Haiti and Monika Kalra Varma of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, writing in the Boston Globe.

“I have heard the president say that based on what the engineers tell him, it will take 1,000 dump trucks working for 1,000 days to clear away the debris, and I am not sure even the experts know how big is the pile” – Leslie Voltaire, an architect and diplomat who is leading the effort to plan Haiti’s reconstruction, quoted in The Washington Post.

“I think that the tsunami detection and warning operation that we saw over the weekend worked spectacularly well. Especially in comparison to 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami hit, there’s a world of difference” – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenko, interviewed in The Washington Post, speaking about tsunami warnings after the Chilean earthquake.

“The disaster of Haiti is not the earthquake. What we are seeing here is what happens when an extreme natural event occurs in the lives of people who are already frighteningly vulnerable” – International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the report Haiti: From Tragedy to Opportunity.

“We are facing some urgency now. We are one million people living in the street” – Haitian President René Préval, quoted in The Washington Post.

“As a neuroscientist, I remain interested in learning how these phenomena may help us to better understand how individuals process information so as to become resilient to such horrible events, which could easily include pandemics, famine and war.

As a human being, I am in awe of the will, strength and desire to overcome that are all manifested by the people subjected to such horrors” – Noah Gray, Editor of Nature, writing in Haiti Rewired, http://haitirewired.wired.com/profiles/blogs/senior-editor-of-nature-on

“Many women who do not dress modestly […] lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes” – Senior Iranian Cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, quoted by Iranian media, reported by Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/19/iranian-clericpromiscuou_n_543100.html

(All extracted from Natural Hazards Observer, May 2010, p. 3.)