PlanMetro: Haiti Earthquake: Crunching the Numbers

Today is Tuesday, January 25th, 14 days after the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti and sparked a massive disruption in the lives of Haitians in their home nation and abroad. Let's look at few moments to take a look at some of the numbers so far:

3,000,000: Estimate of Haitian population affected by the earthquake reported by USAID.
591: Estimate of makeshift camps in the Port-au-Prince area housing earthquake survivors.
235,916: Number of Haitians that have left Port-au-Prince since Jan 12 according to the Haitian Government.
75,000: Average number of Haitians that moved to Port-au-Prince from rural areas in the last 3 decades prior to the Jan 2010 earthquake.
$29 million: Funds raised by the American Red Cross via text-message gifts (a record).
5%: Percentage of Red Cross text-message donors that have opted-in to future messages from the Red Cross.
90%: Probability of one or more aftershocks of magnitude 5 or greater over the next 26 days according to the United States Geological Survey.

The stories and commentary behind these numbers are more important than the numbers themselves when it comes to finding long-term solutions to Haiti's problems. As events continue to unfold in Haiti it will be interesting to see just how well the government of Haiti, the UN and foreign governments can work together to bring security and aid to the affected communities. Hopefully the ongoing recovery efforts will continue to be covered as vigorously as the first 2 weeks were following the disaster. That being said, there hasn't been much in the news lately about the last tsunami we've seen in the news or the last major earthquake (although to its credit Indonesia has a bit more awareness and resilience for this type of threat.)

Photo courtesy of du.schultz via Flickr.

Note: Looks like CNN was in a number crunching mood today as well - I guess that's to be expected as we hit the 2 week mark.