Rather than dwell on the much-reported disaster, the WHL Group hopes you will join the global effort to help reach everyone distress. Below you will find an assortment of programs through which you can make a show of solidarity.

Fortunately, in a highly developed country like Japan, the resources and readiness to respond to the immediate crisis are in place; the country’s government has already begun a massive mobilisation to forestall any further calamity and eventually repair the aftermath.

Given this, we agree with statements from some global relief organisations that now is not the time to saddle Japan’s leaders with the burden of coordinating external aid, no matter how well meaning it may be. (In any case, the world has other regions of extreme need but without the infrastructure of a place like Japan.)

Therefore, if you are able to give, we encourage you to focus your generosity on (1) relief groups already on the ground and with a long history of connection to Japan, and (2) local organisations that will find themselves targeting support for vulnerable individuals, groups and communities that my slip through the cracks of national emergency programs.

The enormity of the challenges in Japan are such that the inevitable limitations of human and material endurance will lead inevitably (perhaps sooner than expected) to need. In anticipation of that, please do not hesitate to donate now.

In addition to what follows, Google Crisis Response has created its 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsuanmi page, which is especially useful for anyone in search of “information regarding the disaster and damage with realtime updates.”

Where and How to Give

+ American Red Cross (for the Japanese Red Cross Society in Japanese, look here)
+ Authors for Japan
+ Crowdrise
+ Doctors Without Borders
+ Global Giving
+ International Medical Corps
+ Japan Ecolodge Association
+ Japan Platform
+ Mercy Corps
+ Network for Good
+ Oxfam America
+ Salvation Army
+ Save the Children
+ Unicef
+ World Vision

In the US, text donations (added to your monthly cell/mobile phone bills) are possible through the following services:
+ American Red Cross: text ‘REDCROSS’ to 90999 to donate $10
+ Global Giving: text ‘JAPAN’ to 50555 to donate $10
+ International Medical Corps: text ‘MED’ to 80888 to donate $10
+ Salvation Army: text ‘JAPAN’ or ‘QUAKE’ to 80888 to donate $10
+ Save the Children: text ‘JAPAN’ or ‘TSUNAMI’ to 20222 to donate $10
+ World Vision: text ’4JAPAN’ to 20222 to donate $10

Houses all over Santiago suffered damage after the earthquake. Now residents are starting to pick up the pieces and try to put their homes and lives back together.

Everyone jumped up and started running toward the door, screaming as the walls continued to move for an excruciating 90 seconds. The entire neighbourhood flooded into the street for fear of their houses collapsing.

Throughout the early morning of the 27th and the rest of the day, we continued to feel aftershocks. There were so much that sometimes we couldn’t tell if it was our imagination or the ground was actually moving. Nevertheless, by midday, our electricity and internet access had been restored, which gave me the opportunity to find out exactly what had happened and if it was something my family back in North Carolina would see in the international news. I quickly discovered that the earthquake had measured 8.8 on the Richter scale and a top news story worldwide.

Chilean State of Emergency

Chile is no stranger to quakes, since it sits on one of several active fault lines that make up the Pacific Ring of Fire. But this earthquake is said to be the fifth strongest one in 100 years. While the epicentre was out in the ocean, 325km southwest of Santiago and 115km northeast of Concepción, an estimated 2 million people have been affected or displaced and 1.5 million homes have been damaged. At present, the death toll lingers above 700, although once we discover the whereabouts of the missing, it is expected to rise.

The Church of the Divine Providence in Avenue Providencia of Santiago, Chile, suffered structural damage from the tremors. This photo was taken a few hours after the earthquake. (Photo by Santiago Vanegas)

The worst damage was done in the Chilean region of Bio Bio in the middle of Chile. Now, with the dust settling, residents are trying to piece their lives back together. Where the quake hit the hardest is now a near wasteland and major roads, bridges and countless buildings are in ruin. The search for survivors is still in full force, as the rubble of apartment high-rises and other destroyed buildings is being cleared. One 15-story building in Concepción was demolished and several areas of the main road, Ruta 5, were lifted.

Closest to the centre of the quake, many people remain without electricity or potable water. Rampant looting has broken out in the more affected areas, such as Concepción; as some people may be desperate for basic supplies, others are taking advantage of the lack of security. President Bachalet has called in the army to police problem areas and help with control issues. They have had to resort to tear gas at times to keep the chaos at bay.

On the positive side, Santiago’s Arturo Merino Benitez Airport is expected to begin receiving some international incoming flights on Sunday after it was closed due to runway damage. Some parts of the capital’s metro system were also reopened Monday, while others are being inspected for possible repairs to the tracks. At present, many of city’s traffic lights are still not functioning.

How You Can Help

I was very lucky to make it through such a strong earthquake with only a broken mirror and a crack through my bedroom ceiling. Others in the country were not so fortunate and now lack the basic necessities. In general, Chile has serious problems.

If you would like to offer some aid to those in need, several non-profits have come forward to organise aid efforts. Take a look at these links to find out more:

• Americares
• Chilean Red Cross
• Habitat for Humanity
• International Medical Corps
• Save the Children
• UNICEF
• World Vision International

Maureen Valentine is the Regional Editor for whl.travel in Central and South America.

Information from people actively helping to direct donations to the right places have relayed a call made by the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Assistance for 200,000 tents. By some estimates, less than 5% of what is needed has made it to people on the ground.

To help with this effort, Partners in Health, a non-profit medical charity that has been working in Haiti for for more than 20 years to build local medical capacity, has set up a special Web page for everyone able to donate money specifically for tents and bedding (sleeping pads, blankets and lightweight sleeping bags).

Donating cash is by far and away the best way to help. Partners in Health is not able to handle in-kind donations, generous though they are.

People, injured and afraid, on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, following the earthquake (photo courtesy of Lambi Fund for Haiti)

I watch in horror, helpless from my distant perch (Sydney, Australia) but committed in whatever trifling ways open to me, reminded of just how thin the thread is that keeps us all safe on a sometimes merciless planet that, with a simple shrug, is able to wreak so much havoc. I was resident (albeit not present) in Sri Lanka at the time of the tsunami five years ago. I hastened home to Colombo a week later to do what I could then. What I feel today is laced with the anger and frustration of that time.

Thankfully, faced with rising predictions of the number of lives lost, the international community is promising financial aid, food, water, medicine, clothing and anything else of those who survived the catastrophe.

In solidarity with the Haitian people, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of people around the globe are reaching into their pockets.

Special News About How You Can Help

To help you make a decision about how you can help, I’ve received permission from a fellow travel writer, Paul Clammer, author of the Lonely Planet guide book to Haiti, to reproduce sections of an email he sent to many of his colleagues yesterday.

It’s the kind of inside take we should all always have when in search of an informed way to help. My trust in what he shares here is implicit:

“I’ve spent the last 24 hours trying to get to grips with the news from [Haiti], and as we’ve all discovered, hard news has been hard to come by in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. The Haitian phone network was out of action all yesterday, and is patchy today. I haven’t been able to contact any of my friends in Port-au-Prince directly, but have managed to learn (unbelievably, through following a long chain of Twitterers) that they’re OK.

The place I like to stay at in Port-au-Prince, St. Joseph’s Home for Boys, a vocational home for ex-street kids that also runs as a guesthouse popular with backpackers, was totally destroyed, although mercifully no one was injured.

But things aren’t good – parliament destroyed, the presidential palace destroyed, the main hospital, the UN headquarters, a major hotel, the prison, the Catholic cathedral – all destroyed. The southern town of Jacmel – a truly lovely place with beautiful Victorian buildings and one of the best carnivals in the Caribbean – is also reportedly heavily damaged, and the road over the mountains connecting it to to Port-au-Prince is impassable due to landslides. The scale of the disaster is quite numbing, and people can so far only guess at the number of dead. Tens of thousands doesn’t seem unlikely.

Naturally, aid agencies are crying out for assistance, and I urge you to please give something if you can. The BBC website has a good page listing NGOs on the ground in Haiti. Of these, the Red Cross is naturally one of the biggest players, while Oxfam have long had a big operation in Haiti.

That said, I’d like to mention three excellent smaller organisations in Haiti worthy of your support – these are the sort of smaller players who inevitably get overlooked in the media scrum, but often have more focussed and effective programmes working among local communities – essential characteristics once the immediate heavy lifting of disaster relief is over, and the media and world inevitably turn their attention to the next story.

* Partners in Health is a medical charity that has been working in Haiti for a long time, building local medical capacity. Run by MD Paul Farmer, a noted writer on Haiti, it has a large network of Haitian doctors and nurses well-placed to offer immediate and long-term medical assistance.

* The Lambi Fund is a smaller but highly regarded development charity. It offers assistance to communities outside Port-au-Prince (areas also hit by the effects of the quake) to help arrest the decline of the agricultural sector which has driven hundreds of thousands of young people from the countryside to search for a livelihood in the capital’s now-stricken shanty-towns.

* Yele is a development NGO working mainly in education and community projects, but with extensive experience in food distribution and emergency relief. Yele was set up by the musician Wyclef Jean, who is also a Goodwill Ambassador for Haiti. Its close ties to communities in some of the poorest and worst affected areas will be invaluable in the coming weeks and months.

Parts of the media haven’t been slow to point out that Haiti seems like a country from which only bad news ever seems to come, but the last few years really had seen the country begin to turn a corner. Security has largely no longer been an issue, peaceful elections have been held, and some major foreign investors have started to return to the country. The tourism sector, once Haiti’s major hard currency earner, was also starting to pick up. It’s not all a bed of roses certainly, but the outlook was positive. But the legacy of long periods of political instability has seen Haiti’s infrastructure in tatters even before the earthquake. This is a country in need of serious and prolonged help.”

If you’re based in the US or use a USE mobile phone carrier, two further popular and very effective ways of making a donation are as follows. Despite rumors to the contrary, these are NOT scams. Others may be, but these two are reliable:

* Text HAITI to 90999 – The U.S. Dept of State’s website has suggested making a $10 donation. This charge will show up on your next phone bill.

* Texting YELE to 501501 – This is in support of Wyclef Jean’s Yele movement (see above). You will automatically be making a $5 donation.

Residents of Manila do their best to come to grips with life in a city left flooded by Typhoon Ketsana

In the Philippines, the typhoon began on Friday evening with rain and wind warnings from the local weather centre. Torrential downpours continued into the night and throughout the day on Saturday. Utterly unrelenting, the rains quickly turned into floods and by Saturday afternoon, Metro Manila was inundated.

With the heaviest precipitation in 40 years, Typhoon Ketsana dropped 17.9 inches of rain on the Philippine capital – a month’s worth of rainfall all in 24 hours. At the height of the flood, 80% of Manila was submerged.

Cars in Manila were no match for the force of the waters dropped by Typhoon Ketsana

The storm affected some 2 million people, wreaking havoc on lives and land. At the time of writing, there are approximately 300 reported dead, 38 missing and more than 500,000 evacuees.

Unexpected strong currents pushed flood waters into people’s homes, turned many of Manila’s busy streets into swimming pools and tossed floating vehicles around as if they were toys. Scuba divers and surfers were called on to volunteer in the search for missing people. Survivors were rescued from the roofs of their homes, some after 10-hour waits in the cold downpour. No one was spared.

Ketsana’s destructive impact left behind a nation in pain. Even before the floods subsided completely, civilians of all ages had mobilised and rescue and relief efforts were underway. Facebook, Twitter and text messages carried news about which relief centres needed which goods the most, as well as notices with further weather warnings, alerts about missing people and other critical information needed for rescue operations.

Due to the significant clean-up costs, the Philippines is pleading for help from other nations. Manila alone needs everything it can get to repair the mess. Although closets, cupboards and wallets are being emptied to provide relief to the hundreds of thousands of displaced victims of the typhoon and floods, more is required, especially since relief operations will probably continue at east until the end of the year. Even intangible support is welcome – comfort, warmth and love shared with the poor traumatised children who have lost their families.

“I’m going to Manila first thing tomorrow,” reported one staff member who works with the whl.travel partner in Boracay in the Philippines. “Another super typhoon is hitting and I’m freaking out. I’ve got to be with my parents. Things have been crazy and emotional for a week already – it’s surreal. That’s climate change for you.”

Rescue efforts began immediately, everyone able to help a neighbour reaching out as necessary

[Update: On 3 October, eight days after Ketsana moved on, Typhoon Parma made landfall in the Philippines. Although Manila escaped the worst, the northeastern tip of Luzon was hit hard and the southern villages of Taiwan were evacuating.]

To make donations from abroad, check here for a comprehensive list of options.

“At this time [late afternoon on Tuesday in Samoa], there are 69 confirmed deceased, 146 injured brought to the hospitals, with several missing. To date there are only five tourists in the deceased list,” reported Nynette Sass, the whl.travel local partner in Samoa. (Read more about Nynette Sass, the right person in the right place during these difficult days.)

“Please bear with us whilst we work our way through this sad sad event. We’re working with the High Commissions in identifying and locating all the visitors from the devastated areas and trying to get through to their loved ones to let them know their respective states.”

The tragic loss of life was accompanied by significant property damage, the details of which are still emerging. “All our member properties on the south coast have been wiped out,” reported Sass. “We’re madly trying to move all our tourists from the south coast to Apia.”

The whl.travel family has already begun mobilising in support of relief efforts. “There are hundreds of families with nothing left except the clothes on the backs,” said Sass. “Used clothing, cooking utensils… perhaps if someone can coordinate from the different countries, we would appreciate it very much.”

The Latest Word from the South Coast of Upolu

Whereas Apia is located on the north side of Upolu, Samoa’s main island, the south received the full brunt of the waves. “We were all very, very lucky at Virgin Cove Resort as nobody was killed or badly hurt,” reported Mats Loefkvist, manager of this hotel located on the south coast. “Although we were very close to losing many lives we managed to get everyone up in the forest rather quickly. Due to the fantastic and fearless work of our staff to save all our tourists plus my wife and kids we are all safe today.

“We only had 10 minutes between the big earthquake and the first wave. Luckily it happened in the early morning and not during the night. The wave also came in from the side which reduced its impact and then swept away the beach villa plus five smaller fales. We managed to get everyone to the church minister’s house and we all camped in the church hall during the night. The village of Sa’anapu brought us food and everything else we needed.

“The damage to Virgin Cove Resort is very little compared to other resorts and villages like Lalomanu, which today is non-existent. I have received many mails from people asking how they could help with a donation. The Red Cross has it all set up as they do a fantastic work to help people at this time. I know that clothes are badly needed as many many people have lost everything.”

For contributions and donations, please visit the Current Appeals page of the Red Cross in New Zealand.