Strongest Earthquake Ever Recorded in the Caribbean Basin

It was a 9, rather than a 7, as initially reported.

Many of us didn't get much sleep last night.

Information is hard to get, particularly after Richard Morse's batteries died (he owns and lives in the famous Hotel Olaffson, and is the head of the Haitian music group, Ram). His tweets were  the closest to real information a lot of us had.

To make an emergency donation to Oxfam:


https://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/haiti-earthquake/index.php

A worse problem than raising money is going to be the lack of organizational infrastructure with which to coordinate and distribute aid. How do you get drinking water to two million people? A number of people seem to be ready to go down as volunteers, as per the comments on

http://redcrosschat.org/2010/01/12/earthquake-in-haiti/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedCrossChat+(Red+Cross+Chat)

No word yet of the situation of the Cuban doctors who are in Haiti on an ongoing basis.

The best composite source I've seen is the "The Lede" blog at the New York Times -- too long and too many widgets to copy into an e-mail -- with updated information about resources for information and contributions, as well as tweetlinks, pictures, video, etc.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/gleaning-information-from-haiti-online/?hp

There is a State Department number to call for information about family members in Haiti: 1-888-407-4747. I don't know how useful that will be.

There is a site set up to collect information:

http://www.haiti.ushahidi.com/#

It doesn't have a lot of material yet, but it reports that the P-au-P airport is functioning. On the other hand, CNN's Anderson Cooper reported that a helicopter he was in almost collided with a small plane -- that is, there is no functional air-traffic control.

There have been numerous aftershocks. An explanation of the tectonics underlying the quake is at

http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/01/tectonics_of_the_haiti_earthqu.php

Photographer Daniel Morel's twitpic blog, if you can bear to look at it, is

http://twitpic.com/photos/photomorel

There's also a flickr feed:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=haiti&ss=2&s=rec

For vodouisants, Tuesday was Dantor's day, today, Wednesday, is the day of Papa Ogou.