too: Hope

too: Hope

TOO

THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 2010

Hope

Several days ago I volunteered on a relief mission to Haiti that brought in nearly 20,000 lbs of supplies. While the trip was brief, I did travel into the city of Port-au-Prince to deliver medical supplies to a key hospital and witnessed the devastation first hand.

Upon arrival at the airport, the first thing you see is the sheer scale of the relief effort. Numerous C-17s and other cargo planes are continually flying in and out, offloading vast amounts of supplies. Dozens of military helicopters are simultaneously in operation on a scale far beyond anything I have ever seen. Thousands of military and civilian personnel are active from the US, UN, Haiti, and relief organizations.

Driving into the heart of the capital city the need for such scale becomes apparent. Because the airport is farther from the epicenter, the damage you first see appears relatively minor -- cracks in buildings, damaged walls, and littered streets. But soon the sheer magnitude of the devastation becomes difficult to comprehend. Many entire buildings have been reduced to rubble. Makeshift tent camps dominate plazas and parks. Perhaps the most haunting are the buildings that have partially failed but not entirely collapsed. The National Palace stands a surreal site with tilted domes and crumbling walls. Other government buildings are completely leveled.

The vast majority of the former buildings in the hospital I visited are too damaged to be safe. The remaining two buildings that are being used to care for patients show their own signs of compromise. Yet heroic volunteers are able to serve over 1000 patients with a wide variety of serious injuries. They are short on supplies and only recently got electric power so they have light which allows them to work at night.

However, the real heroes are the people of Haiti. Despite tremendous challenge and suffering, they still show an incredible strength of spirit and resilience to the harshest of conditions. Seeing the people firsthand left me with a vastly different impression than I had going in based on news reports. Instead of roving gangs of violent criminals, I found people caring for the wounded and providing critical supplies to those most in need. Instead of people weeping of despair, I saw people busy rebuilding their lives in the most challenging of environments.

Yet immense challenges do remain and it is a race around the clock to prevent suffering, untreated injury, and loss of life. I believe there are several key factors that could tilt the odds dramatically. First, while there is tremendous relief effort from the US, UN, Haiti, and NGOs, the coordination and organization between these remains unclear. It is critical to have top level command and control across the entire breadth of efforts in order to maximize effectiveness.

Second, it is necessary to scale up the provisioning of shelter, food, water, sanitation, and health care by at least an order of magnitude. As much as it has difficult associations, I believe the best way to accomplish this is large scale temporary tent camps to house hundreds of thousands of people. I believe these should be near the airport or other facilities to which supplies can be readily delivered.

Lastly, there are several categories of people who should be evacuated out of Haiti to other countries (notably the US) where there is far more capacity to provide care. This includes those who are severely injured as well as orphaned children. While each of us is a citizen of a particular country, we are all citizens of the world. The responsibility falls on all of us to lend a hand when a tragedy of this magnitude befalls some of us.

Photos from my trip are here. Note they may be difficult to look at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sergey.brin/201001Haiti

In the past two days, we have posted fresh high resolution imagery in Google Maps which I hope will be valuable to aid workers:

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-imagery-of-port-au-prince.html

The main Google crisis response page for the Haiti earthquake is here and has numerous resources including how you can help:
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/index.html

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SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2009

Journey of a lifetime

In everyone's life, there are moments that they know will change their future forever. I had such a moment thirty years ago today but at the time I could never have imagined the magnitude of the impact. That was the day my family first arrived in the United States.

The journey to get here was challenging. Just applying to leave the Soviet Union branded us with a scarlet letter -- my father lost his job and we received visits from the police. However, after nine months in this status we were able to make our way to Austria and then France where we stayed for four months waiting for our American visas. With few real possessions and no steady income, times were hard but there were people who helped us all along the way. Finally, we landed in New York on October 25th, 1979. Thanks to many organizations and individuals, we were able to start life anew in this land.

It is impossible for me to overstate the opportunity this country has given me. In many ways, the fortune I have enjoyed with Google exemplifies the American dream, but to me that is just the tip of the iceberg. Reflecting upon my life, I have many basic freedoms that my parents did not -- the ability to pursue my interests in school and university, the choices in jobs, the freedom to live in the place of my choosing, and ultimately the ability to pursue my own enterprise.

There are too many people and organizations for me to properly thank in this post but I would like to highlight a few:

HIAS - http://www.hias.org/ - provided help all along the way with logistics and expenses as they have for millions of jews.

Casip Cojasor - http://www.casip-cojasor.fr/ - provided assistance during our stay in France.

IHES - http://www.ihes.fr/ - provided housing and a research stipend for my father.

Jewish Federation DC - http://www.shalomdc.org/ - helped to settle us in the US.

University of Maryland - provided employment and a new community of friends.

To these organizations and many individuals who helped us, my sincerest gratitude.

PS Please see a related article today in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/25donate.html