I guess the pivotal issue here is not so much the scope of the quake and resulting damage, or the poverty that has either been an immediate consequence of it, or the underlying destitution that has existed for decades in Haiti. Nor is it the fact that I'm sitting writing this on the beach where the Kennedy's used to vacation -- at an old Club Med some 50 nautical miles from Port-Au-Prince.

I guess it's the familiarity of it all now. It's truly the same broken record I've seen playing in so many other places around the world. The contrasts here are extreme in almost every measurable way, and many that can never have a quantifiable comparison.

We are at a supermarket inside a sealed-off compound. Over the wall, we can see into neighbourhoods where houses are heaps of rubble but not a single rescue worker's in sight.

Inside the compound, a massive rescue operation is going on involving workers from Iceland, the U.S., Spain and Venezuela. I am a translator for the head of the rescue team. In the past 24 hours, nine people have been recovered alive -- all but two, Haitians report, by Haitian civilians.

But the foreigners with the fancy rescue suits, carabiners, boots, dogs and listening devices are all clustered here: a dozen dogs, more than 60 men with earphones tuned into digital hearing devices or with computers.