Sergey Brin's relief mission to Haiti | Hacker News Reader

Sergey Brin's relief mission to Haiti

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12 pointsfserb7 comments

How does the U.S. effort in Haiti compare to the U.S. effort in New Orleans?

That's an interesting question, and I'd be curious as to an answer.

However, such a comparison should bear in mind all factors, including the death toll of both events. The loss of human life has been in my opinion one of the greatest forces behind all the aid efforts in Haiti.

I'm sure the economical impact of Katrina was greater, but I think the Haiti's death toll will significantly overshadow Katrina.

1. The Katrina death toll was about 1800. So it in no way compares to the destruction in Haiti.

2. There are significant differences in the two disasters. Haiti has been destroyed while in the US only a major city was destroyed, those in the city can easily move to other cities it's much harder to leave Haiti.

3. The US military is has significant limitations on actions it can take in US and rightly so.

4. The majority of the problems with regards to Louisiana were due to complete incompetency of the state government not following it's own plans and a lot of the controversies were generated by the media merely repeating rumors.

He didn't say "death toll" or "long term economic effects", he said "effort". The question posed is about the U.S. effort. Has the U.S. effort in Haiti been significantly more impressive than it was in New Orleans? If so,is it just because different authorities are involved? Presumably FEMA has no involvement in this one? Maybe lessons have been learnt from New Orleans?

Understood.

However, when making a comparison it's generally safer to take into account the context of what you are comparing. In this case the effort, both private and public needs to be presented within the backdrop of what exactly is happening.

Because as you analyze the effort and its accompanying effectiveness you're also going to have to put that effort in context. If in Haiti there are X number of injured people treated and in Katrina there were Y number, how do you establish a direct comparison? Like what percentage is Y in relation to total injured? How's X compare to that?

You can go down the list, and you'll eventually have to come to quantifying the catastrophic event in order to put the response in perspective and measure its effectiveness.

Let's say that I don't want to be safer, and choose to live dangerously. I have no interest in comparing the number of people injured in each. I am not looking at this stage for context.

I want to have an absolute comparison - has the U.S. been better organised in their Haiti relief mission than in the New Orleans one. If so, why?

So are you mostly concerned about organization? Or also in terms of support given?

Looking at the numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_reli...) I would be incredibly surprised if the Haiti relief efforts even come close to 1/10th of what was given to support Katrina (~$52 billion).

As far as organization, from what I've heard from people I know who are there helping, some parts are completely chaotic especially the farther away from the capital. In other areas people have had to step in and assume authority due to the government being non-existent.

There isn't even any clarity as to who controls the relief operations UN or US. And there are definitely various roles that were filled in by the US (air traffic control).

Maybe others can help chip in information?

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