A little perspective

Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. The latter country occupies the eastern 2/3 of the island, shown here in a dark shade of grey. With a little allowance for projection distortion, here's what Haiti and the island of Hispaniola would look like located off the coast of Labrador.


Haiti's population in 2009 was estimated at just over ten million people.

The United Nations estimates that, before the earthquake, there were 380,000 orphaned children among that population. That is equivalent to the population of all three territories and large swaths of the northern part of western Canada, shown here in orange.

The number of dead in the earthquake is estimated to be as high as 200,000. That is equivalent to the population of Labrador and all of western and central Newfoundland, shown here in green. The darker shade of green, around Corner Brook, the Humber Valley, and the Exploits River region, represents the roughly 70,000 victims whose bodies are estimated to have been recovered and buried as of this morning — most of which unidentified, and in mass graves, as the urgency of the situation dictates.

The number of injured survivors is estimated at a quarter of a million. That is equivalent to the population of northern mainland Nova Scotia, plus Kings and Hants counties in the eastern Annapolis Valley, shown here in light purple.

The earthquake has levelled large portions of the most densely built-up portion of southern Haiti, leaving approximately 1.5-million people homeless. That is the equivalent of the remote, rural, and small-town population of eastern, northern, and western Quebec, represented here by the area shaded in red.



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