Greg Snow - Southwest Florida Real Estate Expert provides real estate services to Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva Islands

Everywhere one looks in this poor island nation, there is despair. devastation, death, and shock from events 60 hours earlier. Our State Department, www.state.gov, estimates there are about 45,000 Americans in Haiti. Many, if not most are Haitian-American who have returned to their homeland. However, many an American has been drawn to this poor island (shared with the Dominican Republic), to help with disasters (usually violent storms), poverty and political upheval. Here, in Lee County, Florida, we have a large, and growing population of Haitians, that have sought our area out for better quality of life and our "American dream" hope.

Early reports show estimates of the dead at anything from thousands to hundreds of thousands, and with communications limited to the internet and social networking sites like Facebook, www.facebook.com, and Twitter, www.twitter.com, scarce medical supplies, limited sanitary food and water, haphazard shelters, and aftershocks, we may be many days and nights away from knowing any accurate death toll and any practical plan to begin to replace what little the people had before last Monday. If able, please offer any assistance you can to aid these unfortunate souls.