Imagine turning on the television one morning and seeing the White House on fire. This is equivalent of what the people of Haiti are seeing today. On Tuesday afternoon, January 12, 2010, at 4:53 p.m. EST, an earthquake measuring approximately 7.3 on the Richter Scale shook the island nation for more than a full minute. Unreinforced buildings, including the presidential palace and the parliament building, swayed and toppled, killing what could turn out to be tens-of-thousands of Haitians, and bringing untold suffering to at least a third of the country's 10 million residents.

This is the terrible reality now confronting the people of Haiti, the destitute Caribbean nation that, according to the United Nations Development Program, suffers from the lowest Human Development Index and the highest rate of poverty in the entire western hemisphere.

Those who survived the devastating quake must be asking themselves what Haiti did to deserve this latest tragedy. After finally breaking the yoke of the brutal Duvalier dictatorship in the late 1980s, and subsequently living through the political strife that followed, Haiti has since suffered a series of natural disasters that are hard to fully fathom. Since 1998, Haiti has borne the brunt of six major hurricanes, four of which occurred in a single season in 2008.

But this latest tragedy is likely to eclipse all of the others put together. Haiti's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, told CNN on Wednesday morning that it's possible "hundreds of thousands" of people have died.

"So many neighborhoods totally destroyed, and some neighborhoods we don't even see people," a bereft Bellerive was quoted as saying.

It will likely be several weeks before the world knows the full extent of the tragedy, but there can be no doubt that the situation in Haiti is dire. As of Wednesday morning, rescue efforts have begun and relief agencies have sprung into action to help Haiti's suffering.

We in the U.S., on the other hand, despite our sour economy, can only begin to imagine the difficult lives most people in Haiti experience. We complain about high unemployment, and rightly so, but imagine what it would be like if two-thirds of Americans had no formal job. While we complain about high property taxes, or the encroachment of Walmart, Haitians worry about where the next meal is coming from. While we debate the merits of fixing our dysfunctional healthcare system, most Haitians have no access to healthcare at all.

It's likely that most of us in this country would agree that we should count our blessings.

And, given these blessings, it behooves all of us to do what we can to help Haiti. The nearly 90 percent of us who have jobs, while we may be having difficulties making ends meet, should think about whatever small contribution we can make to help bring relief to a people who probably feel as if mother nature is truly out to get them.

Relief groups are the best way for an individual to help the people of Haiti. Organizations such as OxFam America (oxfamamerica.org), Doctors Without Borders (doctorswithoutborders.org), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (icrc.org) are in the process of sending relief. Mercy Corps (mercycorps.org) is also in the process of sending trained first-responders to the stricken area. All of these groups, among others, will need all the help they can get.

While we may not be able to be as generous as we would like, our shared humanity can defer at least some of the pain the people of Haiti are feeling.