Lessons From Disasters – The Irrawaddy

October 13th, 2010

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=19716

Aftermath of Cyclone Nargis remains the prime example of how a government should not deal with a natural disaster.

Despite well-documented and sometimes unavoidable failings in disaster relief elsewhere, the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis remains the prime example of how a government should not deal with a natural disaster.

It was exactly one week after the Haiti earthquake leveled most of the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince when a man asked me: “Do you know anyone who can help? Can you tell people we are here, without anything?” The disaster killed more than 200,000 people.

The man claimed not to have seen an aid worker or official in the days since the earthquake, much less received any assistance. Slow aid delivery seems to be a common problem in emergency relief.

More recently, I heard similar stories around Sindh Province in southern Pakistan about three weeks after the monsoon floods left one- fifth of the country under water, with 8 to 9 million people homeless. (more…)

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Debating aid and Haiti – ISN

January 29th, 2010

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=111942

Aid to Haiti has largely failed in the past, and now faced with the daunting task of rebuilding the capital from the bottom up, many wonder whether international development plans will be lost in the rubble, Simon Roughneen

writes for ISN Security Watch.

Much of Haiti’s capital lies in ruins after the devastating January 12 earthquake. Up to 200,000 people are thought to have died, many now buried in mass graves outside the city. Hundreds of thousands more are homeless, sleeping in the open or in makeshift camps cobbled together with whatever blankets or sheeting people could get hold of. Delivering sufficient quantities of emergency assistance to so many people is proving a logistical nightmare, with the already limited Haitian infrastructure pulverized by the disaster.

While the emergency phase is from over, already Haiti and interested parties such as the US and Canada are looking to the longer term, and trying to raise money and figure out ways to help the western hemisphere’s poorest country get back on its feet – if it ever was fully so – in the months and years ahead.

As memories of the disaster fade, this will be a tall order. Already various notions of a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Haiti have been floated, evoking the US-led public-private partnership that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. Moreover, the task at hand has reignited the debate over the utility of development aid, with some wondering just how effective such a scheme could be in a Haiti that has received around $9billion in foreign assistance in recent decades.

The aid failure

Garaudy Laguerre is head of the Institute for Advanced Political and Social Studies in Port-au-Prince. He told ISN Security Watch, “This earthquake has profoundly affected or destroyed the little state structure that existed, it has also exposed, in our view, the failure of international aid in the way it has been conducted and used in Haiti.” (more…)

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More Differences Between the Haiti-Burma Disasters – The Irrawaddy

January 28th, 2010

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17680

Haiti President René Préval on Wednesday said that the country’s legislative elections would be postponed indefinitely due to the impact of the Jan. 12 earthquake. The change of plans stands in stark contrast to the Burmese junta, which didn’t let the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008 get in the way of a nationwide constitutional referendum that proceeded as planned mere days later.

Haiti’s polls were scheduled for Feb. 28 and were seen as an important next step in stabilizing Haiti’s fragile democracy. Brazil-led UN peacekeepers have operated in Haiti since 2004, after politicized gang violence.

“The electoral campaign should have opened tomorrow and for obvious reasons, that won’t be able to happen,” Préval said in an interview at his temporary office.

Préval has been criticized by many Haitians, particularly in the vocal and influential expat lobby based in the US, for his apparent reticence after the earthquake. A New America Media/Bendixen & Amandi poll surveyed Haitians living in South Florida and across the country and found 63 percent disapprove of how Préval’s government has responded to the natural disaster.

With government buildings destroyed, the government has been forced to meet at a police station and under a nearby tent.

Préval says he did not want to be seen to be milking the disaster for public relations benefits. He said that as he toured Port-au-Prince the night of the earthquake and the next day, “A lot of people would have chosen to go and be filmed touring hospitals, to talk to the injured. . . . I chose to get to work and try to find help to deal with the catastrophe.” (more…)

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Haiti Aid Response Far Better than Nargis – The Irrawaddy

January 25th, 2010

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17652

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—The slow delivery of humanitarian aid to Haitians has become something of an embarrassment, if not a scandal. All last week, I encountered earthquake survivors who either had not received any relief such as food, water, basic shelter, or had not seen any aid workers in their part of the city. Still others said I was the first foreigner they had met, which in some cases was a week or more after the disaster.

It is possible to write some of this off as white lies, with people trying to clamor for attention by making the case that their street or block has been neglected, and therefore should be prioritized. However, the ubiquity of these complaints and pleas suggests that most are more likely to be true than not. (more…)

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Doing good, not doing so good – The Sunday Tribune

January 24th, 2010

http://www.tribune.ie/news/international/article/2010/jan/24/devastated-haiti-caught-between-limbo-and-fires-of/

Simon Roughneen in Port-au-Prince – Rachel Voltaire shuffled disconsolately on a narrow, rubble-strewn lane, which runs alongside a camp set up to shelter 700 Haitian survivors of the January 12 earthquake.

The area is called Delmas, one of Port-au-Prince’s worst-hit suburbs. Buildings lie flattened, and the locals say that

many bodies remain underneath. Ms Voltaire’s story is a harsh mix of tragedy and Kafkaesque catch-22 that makes her downbeat demeanour all the more understandable.

“ I was kicked out of the US coz I didn’t have no green card”, she drawled. She arrived back in Haiti just days before the earthquake, her five children split between cousins in Georgia and an ex-husband in Miami.

“I ain’t got family left here, more than twenty were killed in the earthquake. My mom, my sisters, their kids, everyone.”

She has savings in Citibank, but all the branches in Port-au-Prince were destroyed. “My ex sent me fifty dollars, but the CMA (a Haitian version of Western Union) doesn’t have no cash, so I can’t get my fifty bucks”, she explains.

“What’m I gonna do?” she asks. “Are those guys gonna help?”, pointing at the GOAL volunteers pacing through the squalid camp to see what the people need, and how it can be delivered. Paul Kelly is a civil engineer from Louth. He tells the ‘community leaders’ to draw up a list of families staying at the camp as soon as possible, so the aid agency can allocate shelter, food and hygiene kit donated by the Irish and US Governments. (more…)

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Haiti ends search for survivors – RTÉ World Report

January 24th, 2010

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0124/worldreport.html

Even as a man is pulled alive from the rubble 11 days after the earthquake, the search for survivors is being called off. The focus moves onto the emergency relief operation.

“Why is there not enough for everybody”, said Clement, who walked a mile uphill on Port-au-Prince’s narrow, debris-strewn streets to get to one of the first aid deliveries to some of the estimated 3 million Haitians affected by the earthquake.

Moving around the stricken Caribbean capital last week, I met dozens of groups in different parts of the city who said that they had not received any aid one week after the disaster. Others told me I was the first foreigner they had met.

Anger, frustration and confusion animated most of the Haitians I met last week. And tragedy, on a scale unimaginable. 10000 people a day are being buried in mass graves outside the city, over 100000 so far. Thousands more lie under the rubble.

At GOALs first aid distribution last Wednesday, an atmosphere of tension and anticipation filled the air. With hygiene, shelter and food relief donated by the Irish, American and Canadian Governments, there was enough for 300 families in this first run.

Not enough for everyone who showed up, waiting in the hot afternoon sun. Tensions grew as some people received aid, while others, who came from districts outside the area of the city where this consignment was to be delivered, were trying to access material aimed for others. (more…)

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“I thought I was dead for sure” – The Irrawaddy/National Catholic Register

January 23rd, 2010

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17644&Submit=Submit

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Screaming as the doctor cleaned and dressed her leg, Lenas then lay back on the bed, drawing breath and, after a couple of minutes, regaining her composure.

“The ground shook for at least thirty seconds, I never knew anything like it,” she said, speaking in Haitian Creole.

“When it was over I was buried. The house was down around me, dust everywhere. I thought I was dead for sure.”

Lenas, 25, spent five hours under the rubble, her leg crushed. It was Jan. 18 when I caught up with her at the Medishare field hospital in a UN compound in Port-au-Prince.

She was receiving her first treatment since the disaster, her leg a nasty mix of bruising, swelling, bleeding and infection.

“I am in a lot of pain,” she said, holding back tears, as Madame Judy, a Haitian nurse who lives in Miami, comforted her.

“I flew home as soon as I heard about the disaster on the news,” Judy said. She arrived in Port-au-Prince late on Jan. 12, ahead of the posse of international aid workers who subsequently struggled to gain access to the country.

The tiny international airport has one runway, and when the US military took over operations there, some aid workers and relief material was held up. It took this correspondent two days to get to Port-au-Prince from Miami, after being diverted to Jamaica. (more…)

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Haiti: ‘His phone died, we don’t know if he is alive’ – National Catholic Register

January 21st, 2010

http://www.ncregister.com/register_exclusives/horror_in_haiti/

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Four days after the Jan. 12 earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti’s capital, surprising news made its way to Jean-Claude Jérémie, making him jump from his spot at a camp close to the port. Like hundreds of thousands of his compatriots, he now sleeps outdoors, his home destroyed.

It was news of a phone call.

“The call was from Father Benoit, he was missing since the earthquake, everyone thought he was dead”.

“So where was he calling from?” I asked.

“He said ‘I am under the concrete, buried here.”

Apparently he was unable to reach his hand phone until loosening an arm. The call was made to another parishioner, a friend of Jean-Claude’s.

Among the estimated 200,000 killed during the 7.0 quake was Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, leading some newspaper reports to suggest an apocalypse for the Church in Haiti, where Catholicism and Christianity sit in an uneasy relationship with voodoo, which is practiced by some Haitians.

Some stories insinuate that apparently superstitious Haitians will desert Catholicism in droves, due to the destruction wrought on the once-magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral and the loss of so many religious and devout laypeople. Built in the distinctively French style and painted pink and cream, it rose above the downtown Port-au-Prince, now a sea of rubble and pancaked multistory buildings. (more…)

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Quake victims dying from treatable wounds as aid trickles through – Voice of America/Today FM/The Irrawaddy

January 20th, 2010

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/americas/decapua-haiti-sitrep-20jan10-82160902.html

http://audio.todayfm.com/1250125.wav

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17617

Simon Roughneen in PORT-AU-PRINCE – “You are the first foreigners we have seen here”, said Pierre Ronald.

Standing beside a group of thirty Haitians sheltering from the midday sun, Mr Pierre said in Carrefour, one of the worst-hit areas of Port-au-Prince, no aid had been delivered . Visibly agitated, he exclaims – “we need food, water, doctors – but one week after the disaster, nothing!”

“Do you know anyone who can help? Can you tell people we are here, without anything, please?”

Aidworkers are trying their best, after overcoming immense difficulties even getting into the country. The seaport is damaged, the airport has only one small runway, limiting access from outside. Haiti’s limited infrastructure has taken a hammering – blocked, or clogged with chaotic traffic, with most of the police not showing up for work since the earthquake. Many have been killed, and others are looking for missing family members.

The lack of police causes other problems for survivors. “We need security too”, says Arnaud, standing next to Pierre. Before the earthquake Arnaud made a living as an artist, and perhaps not known to many outside the country, Haiti had popular and thriving arts/culture scene prior to the disaster. But now he is more concerned about marauding thugs intent on looting and stealing.

“We have set up our own group here to protect women and children. At night, we all sleep here in the open”, pointing to a shabbily-painted playground close to the city’s harbor. (more…)

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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. (more…)

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