STAFF EDIT: Unmoved by earthquakes

The dust of Hurricane Katrina’s worst had all-but settled by the time former President George W. Bush’s infamous FEMA initiative reacted to New Orleans and its suffering people in August 2005. Images of underwater neighborhoods and a drowning populace left us paralyzed and the nearly 2,000 left dead served as testimony to the brutal power of a natural disaster. Universal disbelief blanketed the country.

After the sun finally reemerged, and as the United States continues to reconstruct the broken city, the legacy of delay in aid to the Southeast has eclipsed our other memories of the tragedy. As good as our intentions seemed after we finally acted and as loudly as we hoped our prayers rang through the brunt of the storm, we didn’t do enough as quickly as we should have, even though we watched the Indian Ocean tsunami swallow hundreds of thousands less than a year earlier. We can claim we were unprepared, but our inaction is irreversible, and we cannot undo the damage of our implicit apathy.

Now, two days after an earthquake-ravaged Haiti, we, as United States citizens and Boston University students a comfortable distance away from the wreckage, find ourselves in a similar place. The images of bodies piled in heaps have no doubt struck us, and the thought of 100,000 dead and more missing might have elicited an uplifting and haphazard tweet or Facebook status update, but it’s possible our well-wishes have already exhausted themselves. A few of us might plan an aid trip, and a handful more will move toward can collections or fundraising efforts, but for the rest of us, deep street cracks, broken families and pools of blood have already rolled off our backs. Haiti’s center of commerce is close to collapse and, with it, the rest of the country, but we simply don’t have the will or time to give relief efforts our best.

President Barack Obama has addressed the quake with sea and air aid, and the United States — with the rest of the world — is committed to seeing the country through the peril of aftershock. Our policymakers and political representation have learned immediate action is necessary in times like these, but it is crucial for the sake of the lives lost since Tuesday that we, as those unscathed and with little to lose, follow suit and approach the now-legless country with relentless and unyielding help. True, we cannot all opt to up-and-leave, but we can do more than this.

There is not much left to do for those who are gone, and it is uncertain how far the death toll will have extended by this time tomorrow, but in the midst of disaster, we have an opportunity to see that the deceased did not die in vain, and that an already-struggling country is able to see beyond the fractured lens of its today.