Blog 1 "Preventing Haiti's Next Crisis"

Link : http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/preventing-the-next-haitian-crisis/ 


Key Terms:
1. Bangladesh Cyclone (1991) - (cyclone is a violent rotating windstorm) Bangladesh Cyclone was the         deadliest tropical cyclones ever recorded.  It hit the city of Chittagong district of southeastern.

2. Rule of law - a state of order in which events conform to the law

3. Ireland's Potato Blight ( 1840s) - an unknown disease hit the potato fields in Ireland. Between one third and one half of the crops went bad. The people in Ireland did not necessarily go through a period of starvation but there was a sense of famine.

4. Bengal Famine (1943) - a famine in the region of eastern India and Bangladesh where about three million people died due to starvation and malnutrition.

Why and How? 
One can never explain why or how something happens when it comes to natural disasters. On January 12, 2010,  Haiti experienced an earthquake that nearly destroyed everything that they worked hard to build for their survival. We have no one to blame, but we do have the responsibility to help the people who were affected by it. Most people automatically think of money as the main way to assist a vulnerable country, but sometimes it is more than that.  "Think outside the box" is what everyone says and that is exactly what this economist did.  Edward L. Glaeser holds a very interesting point of view about Haiti's disaster and our approach to helping them. He doesn't state the obvious solution which would be sending money, food and water, and resources. He dug to find one of the base problems that not only caused the high mortality rate in Haiti, but also in the events of Bangladesh Cyclone (1991), Ireland's Potato Blight (1840s), and Bengal Famine (1943). All of these disasters have something in common. They do not have a well coordinated and organized system that knows how to respond to a foreign attack or unexpected catastrophe. Edward compares the system that was taken after the past events of the famine and cyclone to our own disaster which was September 11, 2001. His comment on September 11 is, "The achievements were not just acts of individual heroism but a reflection of organizational competence, which itself was built up over decades by a wealthy, reasonably well- run city, and further reviewed improved after the crisis." His idea to help Haiti is to create a well-structured preparedness system that would allow the people to be ready at any time to deal with these types of events which could end up lowering the mortality rate.

My Predictions
I believe that with the donations coming into Haiti and Edward's preparedness plan, there would be more peace in the lives of the people in Haiti. Not only will they feel safe knowing they have a Plan B, but their entire government can take on a new perspective when rebuilding Haiti that will better their lives. I predict that the government will find new ways of constructing earthquake proof schools, having a system that deals with storing food and water, and creating one or two back up plans that would be taught to all of the people of Haiti for their own safety. My final prediction is that if Haiti presents these plans to other countries, then the other countries will help Haiti to become stabilized and assist in rebuilding a more organized country.