Hurricane Isaac 2012: Death Toll In Haiti Rises To 10

Hurricane Isaac 2012: Death Toll In Haiti Rises To 10

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Haitians began to dig themselves out of the mud on Sunday, one day after Tropical Storm Isaac doused the Caribbean nation and killed eight people here and another two in neighboring Dominican Republic.


With a reported total of 10 deaths for the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by the two countries, the scale of devastation was less than many people had feared.

But the capital and countryside of disaster-prone Haiti did suffer sporadic flooding, fallen poles and scores of toppled tents that housed people who lost their homes in the massive 2010 earthquake.

Joseph Edgard Celestin of Haiti's Civil Protection Office offered few details on the storm-related deaths, but said one man was swept away as he tried to cross a river in a village in the country's north.

Haiti's Civil Protection Office said in a separate report that a 51-year-old woman was killed in the southern coastal town of Marigot after a tree fell on her home. A 10-year-old girl was killed in the village of Thomazeau after a wall collapsed on her.

In neighboring Dominican Republic, police reported that two men were swept away by flooded rivers that burst their banks. One victim was identified as Pedro Peralta, a former mayor in Villa Altagracia, a town northwest of the capital of Santo Domingo. His body was recovered Sunday by rescuers on the banks of the Haina River.

Another male victim, whose identity was not disclosed, was swept away by the Yaguaza River, Dominican police said.

Across Haiti, the number of people evacuated due to flooding rose over the weekend. More than 14,000 people had left their homes and another 13,500 people were living in temporary shelters until Saturday night, the Civil Protection Office reported. Some 8,400 evacuees were in the country's western department, the most populous and where the capital of Port-au-Prince is located.

The World Food Program had distributed two days of food to 8,300 of the people who had left their houses for 18 camps.

The Haitian government reported that a dozen houses were destroyed and another 269 damaged.

Impoverished Haiti is prone to flooding and mudslides because much of the country is heavily deforested and rainwater rushes down barren mountainsides. It's not uncommon for storms to turn deadly; a storm in the Caribbean last year unleashed mudslides that killed more than 20 people in the capital.

In Fourgy, a hardscrabble neighborhood in the northern part of Port-au-Prince, residents used buckets and brooms to clean out mud from their homes and courtyards as chocolate-color flood waters from the nearby Grise River began to recede.

The water arrived early Saturday morning, rising up to the waist of an average adult, but by Sunday it had dropped to about shin high. Still, it was enough to destroy the few belongings of some people.

Rene Stevenson readily gave an inventory of possessions lost to the flood: bed, radio, TV set, plastic chairs.

"Everything's totally lost," fumed Stevenson, a 24-year-old cab driver with dried mud on his bare chest.

If mud caused anguish in Fourgy, wind was the source of despair down the street in Pwa Kongo neighborhood. Isaac blew down rows of tents and other temporary shelters people had lived since they lost their homes in the 2010 earthquake.

Displaced again, the several dozen occupants took their belongings and spent Saturday night sleeping on the wooden pews of a small church next door.

"There's a church so we're here," said Arel Homme Derastel, a 32-year-old father of three. "All's broken."

  Source: huffingtonpost.com

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Keep it simple, make life better

How much can we remember?
There are only so many things that a human being can remember consciously. And all our rational decision-making capabilities are linked to what we consciously remember. It is this limited rational brain that marketers talk to most times through their 'logical' messaging system - 10 reasons why you should buy my product, five explanations why my product is better, three things to remember when you are comparing my service to my competitors. And so on…

When consumers were living simpler lives and buying fewer brands and products, they had the luxury of spending a lot more time listening to the logic of the marketer and evaluating why their washing powder was better than their competitor's. And hence why their sari was whiter than all the other white saris in town.

Can't handle the overload
Consumers' lives, and hence the marketing world, are not as simple anymore. The first crisis is just the sheer number of categories a person has to reckon with. Fifteen years back, most consumers did not have to think about things like mobile phone, internet, e-mail, broadband services, home security, DTH media, social networking, amongst many others. No denying that these made our lives better, but they have also taken memory space in our thinking brain.

Adding to the crisis of numbers is the crisis of choice. Too many brands to choose from. Too many pitches to listen to. Too many options to evaluate.

If we look around, it is evident that we have to engage ourselves with many new products and services that didn't exist 10-15 years ago. To the skeptic, the point is best made if she is asked to open her wallet and asked to count the number of cards she carries there.  The numbers of cards have a story to tell.

Thanks to all the brand conversations and the resulting information overload, the idea of consumer loyalty is dying. Consumers are fast becoming flirters, moving from one brand to another without much thinking. The brand is fast becoming a 'commodity'.  Consumers are buying into better products, not great brands.

Time for a marketing detox
In the world of great branding, less equals more. The gospel reads: Say less, say it well, build a connection and let the consumer be.

Great brands know the secret of simplicity. They know that all brands are essentially in one business - making life better - whether by solving a problem or by offering a new kind of living. And that's what they singularly focus on - tell us how they make our lives better, as simply as possible. Louis Vuitton tells you how your journey gets better. Harley shows you the road to living a life of freedom. Lufthansa tells you how much that moment of 'getting home' matters. Closer home, Fevicol tells you how it helps in joining things.

What is the bare minimum that needs to be said for it to make sense and be persuasive enough? This needs a fine balance.

The statue of David revealed itself once the artist chipped away the unnecessary stone around it.  Great brands will reveal themselves once their marketers learn to chip away the unnecessary.

Source Link- http://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/ColumnsBusiness/Keep-it-simple-make-life-better/Article1-800714.aspx

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