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What was called inevitable, finally happened leaving catastrophic destruction for the city's most vulnerable, the majority poor black population targeted for removal, needing only an excuse to do it. The storm wiped out public housing and erased communities, letting developers build upscale condos and other high-profit projects on choice city land. Perhaps a similar scheme is behind Haiti's current catastrophe with developers ready to take full advantage for long in the works plans, waiting for a chance to be implemented, in this case rebuilding the choicest parts of Port-au-Prince and surroundings and excluding poor Haitians from them.
Catastrophic Death Toll, Destruction, and Human Desperation
President Rene Preval told the Miami Herald that the toll was "unimaginable" and estimated thousands died. He said:
"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. (The main Port-au-Prince ones either collapsed or were too structurally unsafe to be used.) There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them. All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe" as many thousands are believed buried beneath rubble. Haitian aid groups were trying to find their own dead and missing. Limbs protruded from under piles of disintegrated concrete, and muffled cries came from inside wrecked buildings.
The parking lot of Port-au-Prince's Hotel Villa Creole is now a triage center. Doctors Without Borders set up street clinics to treat the injured and said:
"The level of care we can now provide without (infrastructure) is very limited. The best we can offer (is) first-aid and stabilization. The reality of what we're seeing is severe traumas - head wounds, crushed limbs - severe problems that cannot be dealt with at the level of care we currently have available with no infrastructure really to support it."
The Red Cross estimates at least three million Haitians need emergency relief - everything, including food, water, makeshift shelter in tents and medical care. It also reported that it ran out of medicine and needs help to replace it.
Louise Ivers, clinical director of Partners in Health (providing essential healthcare to needy Haitians and the poor in other countries) said:
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