Haitan Earthquake

As you already know, from stating it a few times in class that I will be going to Haiti next month on a cruise. I have never really known anything about Haiti and decided that I would like to learn a little bit about Haiti and what happened that day to cause such devastation to involve so many people.

Haiti is a small island located in the Southern Caribbean. It is approximately 700 miles south of Florida. It is the poorest company in the western hemisphere. Its’ biggest export is coffee, but what Haiti biggest money maker is in tourism. Haiti gets roughly 300,000 tourists every year. This country is very poor but offers whatever they can for tourists in order to make money.

On January 12th of 2010, a 7.0 registered earthquake struck Haiti, (roughly 25 kms west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital). This earthquake took approximately 300, 000 people’s lives as well as left a million homeless. It was estimated that 250,000 residences as well as 30,000 commercial buildings were either damaged or destroyed.

Haiti hits so close to home because in the United States there are approximately 300,000 Haitians living on US soil. As you could imagine with this tragedy, it opens people’s eyes to how many around us are of Haitian descent and helps us to feel more sympathy and pain for them when we are friends with people who have had a tragic incident happen in their home country.

This issue affected the government by bringing aware the fact that in the US we are far better off than others. It also brought out the generosity of some former and even today’s own President Obama. Through the help of Hilary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and their fundraisers, they were able to raise $48 million dollars to aid Haiti.

This affects the government back in the US by taking away some of our political leaders from helping with our own economic problems, and putting them aside in order to help another more unfortunate country. This is good for Haiti, but bad for us...