In any disaster, you’re going to have bands of knuckleheads doing stuff like this. That said, I really don’t see Haiti ever turning a corner and really improving, no matter what resources we give them.
If you’ve ever read about the place, lesson number one is that Haiti is NOT part of the Western Hemisphere. It is a dysfunctional, failed West African state that happens to be located in the Caribbean.
It was born in brutality, ruled by a succession of savage dictators, has a disgusting, bloodletting, amoral religion (Voudon, the Catholicism is just a surface mask).
The people aren’t bad and when they’re away from the place they tend to do pretty well, but even when they throw off their rulers (Baby Doc in ‘87, Cedras in ‘94, Aristide in ‘04) they just get themselves another. We’ve been there quite a few times before, with no lasting benefit.
I’m not saying they are addicted to tyranny and oligarchy any more than Iraqis or Afghans but after two centuries of this I don’t see any change on the horizon.
An episode like this cost Roberto Clemente his life back on New Year's Eve in 1972. During that off-season he took it upon himself to organize a major relief effort for victims of a massive earthquake that affected the Nicaraguan capital of Managua.
Relief supplies were sent from Puerto Rico on three flights during the last week of December that year. After hearing that these supplies were being seized by gangs of thugs and were not getting to the people who needed them, Clemente himself decided to accompany the supplies on the fourth flight on New Year's Eve. That was the flight that crashed shortly after takeoff, killing everyone on board.