Haiti thoughts

I digress briefly...... because I can - this is my blog remember.
My email has been working overtime for the last couple of days. The first indication of a problem was a notification cc'd to me from an emergency watch website to say there had been an 7.3 magnitude earthquake near Haiti and a subsequent tsunami alert.
My brain registered an alert at seeing the word Haiti because I had been there last year for 6 weeks as part of a joint Austrian / NZ team of IT & Telecom Red Cross Emergency Response Unit. At that time Haiti had just been devastated by three hurricanes in a row. I stayed in a hotel in Petionville and was familiar with Port au Prince, it's hillside shantytowns, poor construction, lack of infrastructure, and poverty.
The day before I left a school nearby collapsed killing a hundred or so. It was unfortunately inevitable, as is the outcome of this new disaster.
As the scale of the current event unfolds I find myself privvy to local knowledge that most people don't have. I have seen with my own eyes how ramshackle buildings are put together one on top of another, how long it takes to negotiate the narrow winding alleyways overflowing with people and the sheer mass of people who have outgrown their habitat - a bit like a human algael bloom!
It is difficult for people who have never been there to comprehend the scale involved but here is a picture painted with local comparison: The population of Dunedin represents the dead. Mix them with the population of Christchurch who represent the lucky survivors, then drop in the population of Auckland who represent the injured. Put the whole lot into a space about the size of Wellington, close all the roads, turn off the water, electricity and telephones, send the authorities on holiday, push over every second building, remove the toilets turn up the heat and wait. That to me is the nearest I can imagine of what Haiti has turned into. Hard to believe too that Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the western world is just over an hour's flight from one of the richest nations on the planet! Hopefully in that statement lies part of the solution to speedy and efficient assistance for people who are in desparate need.