When Haiti got hit with the horrid earthquake all the way back in January I spoke about Team Rubicon - here and here.
Chile has been hit by an earthquake which hit 8.8 on the Richter scale. Please note that a 5.0 earthquake is 10 times stronger than a 4.0 earthquake. According to Wikipedia today's earthquake occurs anywhere on the planet only once a year, and has the equivalent of 15.8 gigatons of TNT exploding at the same time. Haiti's earthquake was a 7.0 so therefore Chile's earthquake has many times the amount of energy that Haiti's had. There are numerous factors that effect the final effect that the release of that energy has on a country but nevertheless, Team Rubicon are ready to roll:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As you hopefully by now know, Chile has been rocked by a magnitude 8.7 earthquake off it's coast. This earthquake is over 1000x more powerful than the one that struck Haiti over one month ago.
Initial reports from the Chilean government are casualties hovering near 200, however, communication is down with outlying villages and towns on the coast, and that toll is expected to rise sharply in the coming days.
Team Rubicon has assembled a 6 man recon element to fly into southern Chile to assess casualties near the coast, where large aid organizations will not concentrate their efforts. We expect bottlenecks to occur in Santiago, where the airport is shut down for 24 hours, and concentrated efforts to be focused on Concepcion. This leaves a critical gap in medical attention on the coastal towns.
Team Rubicon is asking you to help us offset the cost of this mission. If you can donate $10 or $15 to our website, we can ensure that thousands of Chilean citizens on the coast will receive the care they need.
I just got this from a friend of a friend who helped out in Haiti, and it wasn't Team Rubicon.
Its doing the rounds of the blogiverse but I've not seen anyone jump up and correct it.
from Haiti – the other side — Let everybody know about this crap………
From A Retired Special Forces Sgt Major:
To All,
I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.
Port o Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble. There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnel house.
The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money. The ones I ran into were either incompetents or outright anti American. Most are French or french speakers, worthless every damn one of them. While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID ( another organization full of little OBamites and communists that openly speak against Americana) These two organizations exemplified their parochialism by:
- USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.
- Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and his wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.
- Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield then put a guard on it while we dehydrated and wouldn’t release a drop of it to the rescuers.
- No shower facilities to decontaminate after digging or moving corpses all day, except for the FEMA teams who brought their own shower and decon equipment, as well as air conditioned tents.
- No latrine facilities, less digging a hole if you set up a shitter everyone was trying to use it.
I watched a 25 year old Obamite with the USAID shrieking hysterically, berate a full bird colonel in the air force, because he countermanded her orders, whilst trying to unscrew the air pattern. ” You don’t know what your president wants! The military isn’t in charge here we are!”
If any of you are thinking of giving money to the Haitian relief, or to the UN don’t waste your money. It will only go to further the goals of the French and the Liberal left.
If we are a fair and even society, why is it that only white couples are adopting Haitian orphans. Where the hell is that vocal minority that is always screaming about the injustice of American society.
Bad place, bad situation, but a perfect look at the new world order in action. New Orleans magnified a thousand times. Haiti doesn’t need democracy, what Haiti needs is Papa Doc. That’s not just my opinion , that is what virtually every Haitian we talked with said. “the French run, the UN treat us the same as when we were a colony”, at least Papa Doc ran the country.
Oh, and as a last slap in the face the last four of us had to take US AIRWAY’s home from Phoenix. They slapped me with a 590 dollar baggage charge for the four of us. The girl at the counter was almost in tears because she couldn’t give us a discount or she would lose her job. Pass that on to the flying public.
Products created to pay for Team Rubicon's supplies and air fares can be found here at CafePress or you can do what I did which is wear a regular t-shirt, know in your heart that you are helping, and send them the cash directly to their PayPal account. Just saying...
The above is a photo taken by the Team last night, of supplies just sitting at the airport.
As Haiti falls from the headlines we should not forget that Team Rubicon are still there helping the wounded and the scarred and scared.
We've all heard of the horrifying earthquakes in Haiti and the rather pathetic and quite unacceptable physical response from around the world.
According to most accounts I have read there is a large quantity of supplies stuck at the airport. Planes loaded with more assistance are being turned away for goodness knows what reasons.
And as a result people are dying.
What did you do about it? Probably the same as I, read some more news articles, forward some e-mails, maybe even donate $25 to a reliable charity and move on to the next article.
Not everyone is like us.
Jake Wood was a Marine Sniper in Afghanistan. He left the service and was kicking back and enjoying his life after a very stressful few years. When he heard about the earthquake he also felt bad and wanted to help. Except being a Marine and therefore medically trained to a certain level, he decided to head down there and help. But why go alone? He gathered some friends and other volunteers and traveled down there on their own dime.
Team Rubicon member Dr David Griswell, like yesterday, becomes the lead physician in the outdoor General Hospital. "It's a disaster. There is no drinking water
The team don't just serve as a first responder for injuries but they also help move power lines, inspect damaged buildings such as hospitals and gathering points and they also have to keep themselves, and others from wasting energy asking why such numb-skulls are visiting at a time when they're body weight in water or gauze pads or antibiotics would better serve the people.
With no structural engineer available, Team Rubicon Firefighters Jeff Lang and Craig Parello conduct the initial structural damage assessment on the General Hospital after the 6.1 quake this morning.
You knew this asshole was going to show up. (direct quote!)
