The Haiti school collapse tragedy

The pain and loss of these children in the collapse of the ridiculously substandard unreinforced concrete school is enormous.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/11/10/news/CB-Haiti-School-Collapse.php

This is exactly what I was warning about when I criticized the many "service vacations" where Christian volunteers go into some poor area to build a school or something and then leave. While this is not the case there (where the Protestant minister was a local), it is precisely this mentality that slapping something in place that is substandard is any way to "spread the love of Jesus" among the helpless poverty stricken. In fact, in my previous blog posting I specifically said that if Christians want to volunteer they should go to teach a trade, such as the carpentry, engineering or whatever, to a local instead of doing the work amateurishly and then leaving them with no way to maintain the results. This is exactly what I was complaining about only a few months ago on this blog.

What can I say. I have been pushing for Haiti to get some stabilizing and decent intervention for years now (I even wrote once to VP Dick Cheney asking him to cycle military Ready to Eat meals through Haiti when they have food shortages after storms and other disasters) but it seems like no one can get any job done in Haiti and that land just keeps suffering. This is not to take anything from the credit of those who are trying, including the UN and the Catholic Church. But Haiti needs a big time intervention and as they say in the above linked article, some stability and adherence to code and law. What an awful mess and needless tragedy.