Haiti Earthquake

It looks like a 7.0 magnitude earthquake has struck Haiti tonight. No one knows the death toll yet because it just happened but from the descriptions of the destruction it sounds like it will be high. Something like this always makes me wonder...why does this happen to the poorest possible place it can? Haiti is THE poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. But if you ask people which was the second independent nation in our hemisphere after us, most would not guess that it was Haiti. I pray that the toll will not be too high, but with poverty comes completely substandard building codes and you can only hope that most people got outside before their crumble ready building or shack came down around them. Aid is already being requested and pouring in and once again the Internet proves it's worth with the lightning speed the call has gone out to millions. How can a country so close to the U.S. be so impoverished? Then again, look at the border of Mexico. Juarez and El Paso could be on different planets. One in the richest country in the world and one of the safest cities in the US, the other a drug lord hellhole with thousands dead and more buried in sand outside the city while the ones that live there are in complete poverty. Could it be the color of the skin in Mexico and Haiti? Could it be the still radiating leftovers of our own colonialism aspirations over the past two centuries? Not to mention a laundry list of the worst possible 'leaders' money could buy in both places. Not an easy answer but one that's forgotten in the dust pall over Port-au-Prince tonight.