Haiti: starting the day in floods of tears

There was a doctor interviewed on the radio as I was waking up so I'm sitting here with tears rolling down my face and dripping off my chin.

It's a full week now. According to the Twitter feeds I follow, there were still people being pulled alive "from the rubbles" yesterday. There were still messages saying people were alive but still trapped.

And so many messages asking for fuel to drive people to hospital, fuel to run hospital generators - there are almost-empty hospitals which can't get patients, because the patients can't be transported. And so they will die.

In the UK:

http://www.dec.org.uk/ - the Disasters Emergency Committee

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ - are on the ground and have been actually getting water to people, though they've had to halt distribution due to lack of fuel a couple of times ( http://twitter.com/carooxfam is one source of information on how they are doing on the ground)

http://www.msf.org.uk/ - Médecins sans Frontières were doing surgery on children without anaesthetic in the yards of ruined buildings within hours of the quake. They had no facilities and inadequate drugs and they got up and saved lives anyway. They have several sites already in Haiti which are still in good order and can save more lives given half a chance.

Edited to add: Also, http://www.pih.org/ who have been working in Haiti for ages. Like MSF they have a number of sites away from the hardest-hit areas where they can help people now. they got electricity overnight at last, too, so could work all night.

http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti is a list of organisations which are helping out. Find one.

And don't give them stuff. This Red Cross blog entry explains why giving stuff us such a bad idea. They need money.

And if anyone knows of any charities specialising in getting gasoline or diesel to disaster areas, I'd love to know about it, because I've been reading about 20 Twitter feeds and the thing they are all desperate for is fuel.

Fuel and they want their families back. We can't give them back their families.

Edited at 16:00 to add: (from @carooxfam):

Water trucks got fuel today and resuming work in vast golf course which is now home to up to 50 000 people

WHY do they take their clothes off so much?

This morning, both children were washed, hair brushed, teeth cleaned, dressed, fed breakfast, and out running errands (bottle bank, ALL the charity shops, and because we got very cold in the playground, chips for lunch) and then we came home and they took all their clothes off.

It's not even all that warm in here, really.

Gah.

Still, the charity shops took lots of old toys and sold us some books, so that's good.

Things I learned from Gene Stratton Porter today

Oirishness is genetic; there's a gene which controls accent and idiom which overrides upbringing and education entirely. To be sure to be sure. Also, Irish men admire bravery more than anything else in a woman (what?) and Irish character traits are also, like accent and idiom, genetic.

And admirable, so that's nice.

I'm glad this wasn't the first GSP I read. I might never have discovered "A Girl of the Limberlost" or "The Keeper Of The Bees" (was that why Atticus called Scout Scout in "To Kill A Mockingbird"?).