Organizing Armageddon: What We Learned From the Haiti Earthquake

Pauli Immonen is quick-marching the length of the tarmac at Port-au-Prince’s crippled airport, looking for a missing 737. It’s not as if he can just check the arrivals board — the 7.0 earthquake that rocked the Haitian capital eight days ago has left the main terminal a flooded, deserted husk. The floors are littered with broken ceiling tiles, and inch-wide cracks snake along the walls. Outside, Immonen skirts a blacktop crowded with military transports and chartered jets; the flock of small planes that usually roosts here has been forced onto an adjacent patch of grass. The noise is as oppressive as the afternoon heat — deep belly rumbles from taxiing aircraft, the basso whup-whupping of helicopter blades, the grumbling and reverse-signal beeps of forklifts and buses.