Interesting to see a country literally disintegrate. Although, it's certainly an opportunity for someone who also speaks French and is good with their hands.

Haiti is about the size of Maryland and a big chunk of the population lives in or near Port-Au-Prince, maybe a third of the total, depending on what you count as a suburb. So the collapse of Port-Au-Prince is a big, big deal for the country as a whole. It's a dominant city for Haiti. Plus Jacmel seems to be leveled. From the reports I have seen, my tentative conclusion is that the country as a whole is currently below the subsistence level and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, the U.N. Mission has collapsed, [the government is not working] (was it ever?), and hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people are living in the streets without reliable food or water supplies. The hospitals and schools have collapsed. The airport is shut down. The port is very badly damaged. The Haitian Penitentiary has collapsed and the inmates -- tough guys most of them -- are running free for the foreseeable future. There is no viable police force or army.
-- Tyler Cowen
I was considering traveling to Haiti in April as part of a trip to an orphanage my church assists near Port-Au-Prince. Not sure if that's going to happen now -- I hope it still does. It's strange to consider this tragedy from an American perspective. Hurricane Katrina was a major disaster here with the death toll being ~1833 people. This earthquake has caused greater than 50x the number of deaths and casualties in a country with a small fraction of the population. Cleaning the place up and helping them recover the lives they had before the quake is going to be a long and hard process -- not an easy one for the UN or the US. Bad policies on the road to recovery could make the situation worse than it already is. -- Cal