Haiti earthquake: time running out in nightmare republic – The Sunday Tribune

January 17th, 2010

http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2010/jan/17/time-runs-out-for-survivors-as-relief-operation-st/

http://www.tribune.ie/article/2010/jan/17/time-is-running-out-as-irish-aid-workers-struggle-/

Simon Roughneen in PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – In ‘The Comedians’, Graham Greene called Haiti the nightmare republic. For the last few days, truth has been more nighmarish than fiction, with an estimated 140,000 killed in last week’s earthquake according to the Haitian Government.

The international relief operation struggling, and time is running out for the estimated 3 million Haitians affected by the disaster – either injured, homeless, or without food and water. With only miracle rescues now possible for those still trapped alive under the rubble, the risk of disease grows by the hour.

In a land notorious for voodoo, the dust-covered corpses lying prone in the early-morning haze took on an eerie aspect, only overshadowed by the sheer scale of the tragedy that left so many dead – and dying – with medical supplies absent, and medical facilities obliterated.

And the stench – the retch-inducing waft of rotting corpses, with so many thousands still under the rubble – settled over the city, as dead as the heat marking the turn from dawn to morning.

Jean-Pierre, 26, said he had been digging for survivors, without food or water, or much of a break, for two solid days. ”We cannot keep going like this, we are trying to reach people, but they cannot last under the buildings.”

Bodies lay in rows or piled beside the streets, some being stacked as roadblocks. On Friday, Haitians began to dig mass graves to bury their dead, which include several leading politicians and the country’s leading Catholic cleric.

Chaos reigned on the streets of Port-au-Prince, with machete-wielding mobs forming road-blocks, and people looting whatever they could lay their hands on. People are visibly angry and baffled at the inability of foreign governments and major international organisations to come to their assistance quickly enough. UN peacekeepers may struggle to keep the peace, with around 4000 convicts let loose after the prison was destroyed. Up to 10,000 US soldiers are set to deploy to Haiti over the coming days, to try maintain law and order, and help relief get through.

But the capital’s already-rickety infrastructure was pulverised by the 7.0 quake, in turn throwing sand in the cogs of the international aid operation. The sea-port destroyed, the US military took over at the international airport on Friday, but the backlog of flights meant that relief workers and supplies struggled to enter, days after the earthquake. Sitting in Miami Airport on Friday afternoon, the departure screen listed numerous commercial flights on the regular schedule to Port-au-Prince, but all were labelled as ‘Cancelled’.

GOAL staff had to get to Jamaica and jump on a Digicel jet, to reach the stricken Haitian capital, where they will partner with Haven to help the stricken.  Irish telecoms company Digicel has operated in Haiti since 2007, and is providing US$5million to support relief work in what is the world’s oldest black republic, founded in 1804 by freed slaves who revolted against French rule.

But when Digicel’s flights were caught in the backlog, GOAL emergency co-ordinator Brian Casey flew to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, the other half of the Hispaniola island alongside Haiti. From there he made a 6 hour road trip to Port-au-Prince, via rioting mobs in the city who are growing increasingly-angry at the hamstrung international relief response. “The city is destroyed and the people are becoming increasingly-desperate”, he said. “Everyone here is touched by this disaster, having lost loved ones. People are getting angry, they need medical supplies, food, water – or there will be another disaster here.”

Now the road in from Santa Domingo is slowing to a crawl, with 12-18 hour journey times being reported, as some aid for Haiti is being routed through the Dominican Republic.

Haiti’s vulnerability to the impact of disaster is attributable to decades of misrule by dictators – most notoriously Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, and his son ‘baby Doc’. They left the country the poorest in the western hemisphere, worse off than much of sub-Saharan Africa. Criminal gangs, often with politically-linked puppet masters, have fought for control of Port-au-Prince’s streets, prompting Brazilian-led UN troops to what critics allege as heavy-handed responses in the city’s slums.

4 storms in 2008 and Hurricane Jeanne in 2004 wiped around ¼ of the country’s already-meagre GDP. Before the Jan 12 earthquake, almost 80% of people lived on less than €1.50 per day, half did not have regular access to clean water, and the total GDP was a mere US$7billion – only around one-quarter of North Dakota’s. Aside from apparel exports, which go tariff-free to the US, the country is dependent on subsistence farming.

All over the city, what were once buildings lay in heaps of broken concrete, steel and dust. Everywhere dust, and Government buildings slumped in the distance, like giant heaps of white plaster sitting under the morning sun. Everywhere, cinder blocks were ground into powder as they collapsed, with little sign of steel-fixings to reinforce buildings. Shoddy construction has added untold numbers to the death toll. I remembered the words of a specialist earthquake engineer I interviewed in Kashmir, while overlooking the wreckage of the Pakistan earthquake in late 2005. He said –  “Earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do”

And now, as we have seen so often elsewhere Port-au-Prince is a reminder that it is the least well-off and poorest governed countries that suffer the most when disaster strikes.

---

1 Comment »

1. 

   great reporting, Simon. when did you arrive there, where r u staying and I assume ur safety is secure.

   Comment by chuck ruoff — January 18, 2010 @ 02:19

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Your Comment