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.

Buildings down in Port-au-Prince, January 2010 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.

Nizam Ud Din Bharchood of Sindhi charity Hands showed me a string of ad-hoc “campsites” along the highway outside Sukkur, the largest city in the northern part of province. At one, around 30 women and children sat under trees in 40-celsius heat, with whatever belongings they grabbed as they fled ahead of the rising Indus River.

“Some of these people are here almost three weeks, without shelter, without regular access to food or water,” he said.

Roadside refuge. Three weeks after the flood, no shelter for this group outside Sukkur (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Reverse the blistering heat for freezing cold and the scene was all too reminiscent of tales heard when in the disputed Kashmir region after the 2005 earthquake. Two weeks after a disaster that left an estimated 80,000 dead and 3 million homeless, the worry was that with the Himalayan winter looming, thousands more could die if adequate shelter was not provided quickly enough. Tents were not an option, given that 4 to 5 feet of snow would cover the region for weeks on end.

In the end, the heavy snows were three weeks late, not arriving until early January 2006. The mild winter possibly did as much to prevent the much feared second wave of deaths in Kashmir than the emergency relief effort, which was heavily criticized in those two months between the disaster and the winter snows.

For sure, aid workers can sometimes cause problems for themselves, particularly when there are cultural or religious differences. In Kashmir in 2005, a long trip across mountains was animated by one aid workers’ lengthy rant about the “cultural lameness” of another NGO, which had apparently been playing loud music late at night in a camp site (aid workers in post-quake locations sleep outdoors, for safety reasons and because there are usually few stable buildings left intact).

“The muj (mujahideen) are in the hills,” she said, as she fretted that the tactless behavior of one organization could make life difficult for Westerners then in Pakistani Kashmir—usually a closed to foreigners—to help in the 2005 relief effort.

Awaiting aid delivery after the earthquake. Kashmir, November 2005 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

As it turned out, the jihadists turned a blind eye to the infidel aid workers and NATO soldiers working in Kashmir, as they busied themselves with relief provisions and, presumably, winning people over to their cause. This is not the case in Pakistan after the deluge where the Tehrik-e-Taliban has threatened to harm foreigners working on flood relief.

The threats are being taken seriously, thereby disrupting the relief operation as aid workers cannot travel to some flood-hit areas. In the days right after the earthquake, the main security threats came from overwrought, expectant crowds at aid distribution points.

In Haiti during the months since the disaster, resurgent gang crime has been a threat to relief operations, with a number of kidnappings of foreigners kept hush-hush lest excessive media publicity lead to increased ransom demands, and, in turn, foster a “kidnap market.”

The sheer scale of both natural disasters in Pakistan and the destruction of the already limited infrastructure around Port-au-Prince mean that the slow aid roll-out had some mitigating factors, in those cases.

That said, human failings meant that nature’s impact was worse than it might have been. Haiti’s earthquake measured 7.0 on the Richter Scale, around 300 times less powerful than the 8.8 earthquake that hit Chile on Feb. 27, killing 486 people. Haiti’s long years of corrupt and violent rule left it the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and probably the most vulnerable to such a disaster.

In Pakistan, allegations now abound that wealthy landowners diverted flood waters away from their plantations and toward land farmed by poor smallholders. In 2005 thousands of schoolchildren were crushed as poorly built schools collapsed, while military structures held firm close to the Line of Control and Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

For some experienced aid workers, man-made factors make disasters much worse in the aftermath, due to neglect, apathy, incompetence or downright cruelty.

Brian Casey, an emergency coordinator with GOAL, an Irish-based NGO that focuses on emergencies, was one of the many relief workers left astonished and angered by the well-documented indifference to the disaster shown by Burma’s ruling junta in the days and weeks after Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, which killed an estimated 147000 people when a 3-meter wall of water washed over the Irrawaddy Delta.

“We got the runaround from the Burmese embassy in Bangkok for over a week,” he recalled. “We got word that we could get visas in Sri Lanka, so we went to Colombo and from there to Rangoon. We arrived in Burma 12 days after Nargis.”

However, his team were never permitted to travel outside Rangoon. He recalled that “we could not monitor, or evaluate, or verify that aid was getting to those who needed it, and therefore donors and governments were prevented from funding us. it was the same story for many other NGOs.”

All other things considered, the obstacles to emergency relief were less in Burma, than either in Pakistan or Haiti. There was one significant difference in Burma, however. “The root of the problem in Burma was policy, the government”, he concluded.

Simon Roughneen was in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake, and in Pakistan after both the 2005 earthquake and the recent monsoon floods.

All over Port-au-Prince, thousands of buildings will need to be razed and rebuilt (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.”

A 2006 report by the US National Academy of Public Administration “Why Foreign Aid to Haiti Failed”, outlines the many shortcomings of development assistance to Haiti over the long term. Despite all the largesse, the country remained near the bottom of global poverty and development indexes, ranking a lowly 146 in the most recent UN Human Development Report, for example.

Haiti is affected by a brain-drain conundrum. The educated usually emigrate, reducing the skills base available locally. But overseas Haitians support families at home via remittances, with Dilip Ratha estimating that they send home $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion per annum, far exceeding the amount of aid sent to the country.

This remittance money has more of an impact as it goes directly into the hands of poor Haitians, while much development aid goes through corrupt officialdom. Haiti is perceived as one of the most graft-prone countries in the world, and all over Port-au-Prince ISN Security Watch met earthquake survivors who do not want aid sent through the government.

“We hear on radio that billions [in development assistance] are given to Haiti every year by the US and others. We don’t see it. Either it’s all lies, or it goes somewhere else. It doesn’t get sent to here,” one survivor, Pierre Ronald, told ISN Security Watch.

However, given that in 2007 an estimated 65 percent of the national budget came from foreign aid, Haiti has little alternative but to rely on international assistance for the immediate future, with 5-10-year timetables floated at a Montreal donor conference in Haiti earlier this week.

Strategic interests

Getting international agreement on what will be done to help Haiti might be difficult. Much was made in the initial days about the US deployment to Port-au-Prince – with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez claiming that Washington was invading Haiti, and NGOs decrying what they saw as preferential treatment given to US military flights over emergency relief cargo.

US military aid flight touches down at Port-au-Prince airport, 3 days after the earthquake. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

However, American intervention has slowly unclogged some of the aid backlog into Haiti, and the international airport is operating way above normal capacity under US military control. The US is the only country with the heavy lift capacity to make a difference right now.

Of course, Haiti is strategically important to Washington because of its proximity and the potential for refugees flowing into the US, which already hosts an estimated 30,000 illegal Haitian migrants. Haiti is also a major transit point for drugs smuggled from South America to the US.

The US will be the main player in reconstruction, though others will contribute. Canada claims to be the biggest donor to Haiti on a per capita basis, while Brazil has been the lead actor in MINUSTAH, the UN peacekeeping mission established in 2004 after Haiti was wracked by one of its intermittent bouts of political violence. France is the former colonial power, which imposed a crippling indemnity scheme on Haiti after 1804, when a slave revolt ended French rule and led to the establishment of the Haitian state.”

All four countries either have strategic interests in Haiti, or have some historic debt to repay, or a bit of both. Despite the fact that Haiti sits on a quake-prone fault line, the notions of debt and interest have sparked some conspiratorial ramblings about the cause of the disaster. Akin to US televangelist Pat Robertson saying that the earthquake was divine retribution for a satanic pact made before 1804 by Haiti’s slave rebels, Chavez accused the US military of causing the earthquake with the testing of a ‘tectonic weapon.’

Overwhelming challenges

How this international acrimony translates into an effective program to rebuild Haiti remains to be seen, as does the content and extent of the rebuilding work. ‘Rebuilding’ is probably too limited a term to describe the full extent of what is needed. Much of the city will have to be physically rebuilt, often from scratch: 20,000 commercial buildings have collapsed or must be razed, as well as 225,000 residences. A bigger international airport will have to be looked at, along with perhaps second airports and seaports.

Aside from physical reconstruction, President Rene Preval has said that decentralization could reduce the slum-swelling drift to the capital and bring some development to the impoverished rural areas.

Other suggestions include ways to diversify Haiti’s economy, which is a basic mix of subsistence agriculture, involving around 70 percent of the population, and textile exports to the US under a preferential trading scheme. Some have suggested that Chinese-style special export processing zones be set up to support and foster trade-oriented production. And a stable, well-marketed Haiti could prove a viable tourist destination.

Attracting foreign investment is another issue. Some of the companies that have gone into Haiti have encouraged others to follow. However, making this happen will not be easy in a country marked by instability, poverty and corruption. Irrespective of stated motives, no company invests out of sheer altruism, and creating the business environment conducive to large-scale investment means getting the bigger rebuilding process right.

The Haitian state will need sufficient ownership of the work, at some stage, but when and how is not clear. In many ways, the Haitian state is an illusion. Since the earthquake, the government has met in a tent, and has been criticized for its apparent unwillingness to speak directly to Haitians.

There is also a danger that a power vacuum could emerge in a politically unstable country, 60 percent of whose population is categorized as ‘youth,’ according to Laguerre. With the government reliant on international support, in time opponents could see an opportunity amid institutional chaos and growing public disaffection.

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.

Quake survivors in Port-au-Prince are living in the open, in makeshift camps. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.”

Already dependent on foreign aid for around 60-70 percent of the national budget, Haiti’s reliance on aid will increase in coming months and years, with 10-year rebuilding plans costing billions of dollars being discussed. Haitian expats remit an estimated US $1.5-1.8 billion per annum, far exceeding the amount of aid and keeping Haitian families afloat amid nationwide poverty.

Haiti’s Electoral Council offices collapsed in the recent earthquake, while UN staff assigned to work with the commission were killed. The president added: “For human and technical reasons, it is obvious that the electoral process won’t be able to proceed as we had planned. Now we have to discuss with the various parties what will happen, what will be the next plan.”

Just as Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, Burma is one of the poorest in Asia— though Burma has a wealth of natural resources that Haiti cannot match.

Regardless, the junta put severe limits on international assistance getting to the disaster area. In the days after that disaster, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the referendum to be postponed in full to concentrate on the “national tragedy.”

The junta was criticized for diverting critical resources from survivors toward the referendum, including evicting refugees from shelters so they could be used as polling stations.

“Instead of putting all resources toward saving the lives of the victims, the military is concentrating on legalizing military rule in Burma forever through a sham constitutional referendum,” said a joint statement from the All Burma Monks Alliance, the 88 Generation Students and the All Burma Federation of Student Unions released after the Nargis disaster.

The referendum and the results—a 93 percent vote in favor of the controversial new constitution—was widely dismissed as rigged and massive fraud and intimidation was reported by Burmese who managed to get information out of the country.

The poll was part of the junta’s self-styled democracy “road map,” which includes elections to be held sometime this year. Last week a senior junta official said that Aung San Suu Kyi would remain under house arrest until November, likely to be after the election takes place.

However, no electoral law or timetable has been decided upon. The 2008 Constitution and the elections together are expected to put a civilian veneer upon continued military rule in Burma, leaving the main opposition parties undecided on whether or not to participate in the elections.

Some of the opposition have called for the 2008 Constitution to be reviewed before talks on national reconciliation can go any further.

While the Burmese junta seeks to retain power, irrespective of the human cost, the much-maligned Haitian president says he will not seek to extend his term in office beyond Feb. 11, 2011, the scheduled end of his term

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.

The blame game can only go so far, however. Haiti’s government has been reduced to meeting in a police tent, and a shell-shocked President Rene Preval was widely criticized for failing to address his people in a timely and urgent manner.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.

The international airport at Port-au-Prince has one runway, and the control tower was damaged during the disaster. The seaport was badly hit, rendered unusable until last Friday. The US military was accused of prioritizing military flights over relief cargo in the initial days after it took control of the airport, and visits by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, followed by another led by her husband, UN Haiti envoy Bill Clinton, sparked some criticism when the airport and airspace were closed off temporarily.

Slowly, progress has been made in addressing the needs of Haitians, but NGOs have limited funds and resources to enable them single-handedly to get around the logistical and infrastructural difficulties posed by the earthquake’s impact and are in some part dependent on governments and international organizations resolving these issues.

But is the delay and backlog as bad as that marking the relief operation carried out after the May 2008 Cyclone Nargis in Burma? The Irrawaddy got some perspective from a man with first-hand experience of both disasters.

GOAL emergency coordinator Brian Casey arrived in Port-au-Prince three days after the earthquake hit. It should have been a day sooner, but the damaged airport meant that many flights could not land at Port-au-Prince, requiring a diversion to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and a five-hour drive across the border from there.

In contrast, he left famine-addled Ethiopia immediately upon hearing about Nargis, arriving in Bangkok the night after the 3.5 meter wall of water, driven by 135mph winds, swept over the Irrawaddy delta, washing away perhaps 140,000 Burmese lives, though the exact figure will never be known. The Haiti death toll could reach 200,000, according to government estimates.

“We spent 9 days in Thailand, fruitlessly trying to get access to Burma,” Casey said. By the 10th day, we heard that there might be visas available in Sri Lanka so we flew down to Colombo.”

Visas secured, Casey and GOAL colleagues were in Rangoon 12 days after the disaster hit.

Despite the lag, they were still among the first aid workers to get into the country after the emergency, not counting the handful of UN agencies and NGOs with an ongoing presence in Burma.

“There were hundreds of people in Thailand who had come to work on Nargis,” said Casey. “Most could not get any further. I’m talking about big organizations with a track record in saving lives. They could not get in.”

The Irrawaddy spoke to Casey in Port-au-Prince 10 days after the Haiti earthquake. Despite the admittedly slow-moving relief effort, Casey says that “7,000 people are getting food and shelter from GOAL, and will be starting cash-for-work projects withing 48 hours.” At the same stage after the Nargis disaster, Casey and colleagues were still seeking permission to enter Burma.

“When we got to Rangoon, the city was in darkness, and for the next seven weeks, electricity flickered on and off.” The Burmese junta makes billions in foreign exchange by exporting electricity to neighboring countries while its own people go without.

Unlike Haiti, Burma has a wealth of natural resources, but the country has been dragged down by violent and incompetent military rulers. Haiti has had a long and sorry history of bad governance as well, and its own rulers have not been shy about lining their pockets – with development aid rather than resource revenues.

The poorest country in the western hemisphere, even before the earthquake, Haiti has been wracked by coups, counter-coups and intermittent reigns of terror perpetrated by state police and paramilitaries, and by violent gangs.

To get emergency relief assistance down to the Irrawaddy delta, GOAL bought shelter, hygiene and basic medical kit at vastly inflated prices in Rangoon. Some Burmese volunteers took the material down to the affected region, while the agency went through the roundabout, tedious and time-consuming process of trying to register as a NGO.

“Our local partners were very nervous about working with a foreign organization,” Casey recalls. “They wanted to help, many lost friends or family during the cyclone, and understood the needs.” However many resigned, citing subtle intimidation and monitoring by the Burmese military.

“We found that some Burmese were so wary of speaking with us, we could not get any information,” he said. “They did not want to be seen associating with us, as it would make them suspect in the eyes of the authorities.”

“We could not get down there, therefore we had no way to distribute ourselves. We could not monitor, or evaluate, or verify that aid was getting to those that needed it,” he said. “Therefore donors and governments were prevented from funding us.”

“Despite the failings of the Haiti relief operation in general, we have already distributed more in assistance here in nine days than we did in 4 months trying to help in Burma,” Casey said.

“The obstacles here in Haiti are different than Burma. Haiti’s infrastructure was not great before the earthquake, but it was destroyed on Jan. 12,” he said. Combined with the impact of nature and concerns about security, this obstructs the aid effort. In contrast, Casey said the obstacles in Burma were man-made, “the government got in the way big-time.”

Casey said that there are no Haitian government or bureaucratic obstacles to aid getting into or around the country. In contrast, he spent seven weeks in Rangoon, and explains that “GOAL was there for four months in total. We were never allowed to leave the city.”

Still, the Haitian government has been widely criticized for its inability to help its people after the earthquake. Several earthquake survivors I interviewed over the past week said that their leaders had gone into hiding after the disaster; others told me to write that aid should not be sent through Haitian government structures, and questioned my counter-argument that according to some analysts and experts on Haiti, conditions in the country had improved over the past 3 to 4 years.

At Fontamara, close to the Carrefour district of Port-au-Prince where the earthquake hit particularly hard, Pierre Ronald said, “We hear on radio that billions (in development assistance) are given to Haiti every year by the US and others. We don’t see it. Either its all lies, or it goes somewhere else. It doesn’t get sent to here,” he said, pointing a plaza where a few dozen women and children lounged under plastic sheeting, sheltering from the mid-morning sun.

The Haiti government has its critics, and rightfully so, but at least it is not getting in the way. In contrast, Casey said the Burmese junta went out of its way to stop aid workers accessing the Irrawaddy delta, where 3 million were left homeless and the region destroyed.

Almost two years later, he is visibly baffled and infuriated by the callous indifference shown by the junta to the disaster and its aftermath, not to mention its deliberate obstruction of assistance to its own people.

“If you leave dead bodies floating in lakes and floodwater you facilitate the spread of water-borne diseases.

If you prevent or ignore the need to send medical supplies, you ensure that people have no defense against these diseases,” Casey said.

“It is my firm belief that the junta sought to create a second emergency after the cyclone, a second wave of death from disease, hunger, thirst and neglect.”

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

Happy recipient of Canadian-donated hygiene kit in Turgeau, Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.

The previous day (Wednesday), GOAL carried out one of the first aid deliveries conducted by a NGO since the earthquake. With enough material for 300 families, the atmosphere went from anticipation to tension as word spread down the hilly streets in Turgeau district that some international aid had at last arrived. UN peacekeepers from Sri Lanka accompanied the delivery, tasked with ensuring the security of aid workers as they distributed the material.

“Back, back – monsieur s’il vous plait!”, echoed around the 10m x 6m square where three narrow streets met. Fearing a deluge of needy Haitians if the distribution took place in a wider, open-air location, aid agencies need to carry out their work at places where crowd management is easier.

Expectant crowd surges at aid distribution in Turgeau, Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Port-au-Prince can be dangerous at the best of times, but with hundreds of thousands of traumatised earthquake victims seeking food, water, shelter, medication and security, amid a stodgily-slow international relief effort, the danger levels for foreigners transporting much-needed goods goes up.

Men have been setting-up vigilante groups to protect themselves and their families as they sleep en masse in the open. 4000 escaped prisoners have roamed the city since the earthquake, and homeless Haitians are afraid. Close to the once-magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral in the city center, a charred corpse lay contorted on the street. Burnt black, the face bore the horror of a man being burnt alive. Apparently this was an escaped convict killed as a warning to others, not to steal or attack the displaced. The remains of the destroyed cathedral towered above, the steeple having crashed through the roof, trapping unknown numbers of religious and lay below, attending a choir practice that evening.

Aidworkers on the ground have been doing their best to meet needs and are growing frustrated. The clogged airport and damaged seaport restricts the delivery of the levels of mass aid cargo that is necessary. Brazilian-led UN peacekeepers and US marines will hopefully ensure that aid can be delivered safely.

But some relief work is not being carried out with sufficient planning or care. On Thursday I saw two truckloads of rice being simply fired out the back of the lorries, onto to the streets, sparking a near-riot among those present to pick up the goods. In the first instance, the truck parked outside a temporary clinic set up to treat the some of the thousands of wounded. The vehicle stopped on a steep hill and men threw the rice onto the street below, despite heavy traffic. The truck then slid back and across the road, nearly ploughing into other cars and pedestrians, who rushed to try get some of the material.

Then again, many Haitians have not seen any aid. In seven different places across the capital, I was told that I was the first foreigner they had seen, a week and more after the earthquake.

“What you goin do for us?” said Andre Whettu. A crowd of about fifteen immediately gathered round, and though no intimidation was intended, the agitation in his voice was clear.

“Nobody has been here since the earthquake, its been ten days. We ain’t doin so good”, he said in the lilting jive-ish Caribbean-American accent that marks out Haitians who have spent time in the US. Most people speak a snappy, staccato form of Creole French as their lingua franca at home.

UN troops help marshall the aid delivery. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Rachel Voltaire ain’t doing so good either. She walks back over, bent on telling me a few more things that she didn’t get to while being interviewed.

“I have an eight-month old baby in Miami, but because I was deported, I cannot get back to see my little girl. I know one guy who didn’t even have a passport, but he got outta here to Miami. I wanna do that. How do I do that?”

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.

Destruction in Port-au-Prince. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.

The airport can only handle 6 cargo planes on the ground at one time, a drop in the ocean relative to the needs in Haiti. The seaport was out of action until Friday, and the overland route from the Dominican Republic is a prohibitive 6 hour drive along narrow winding roads. Not ideal terrain for big trucks carrying rice or shelter materials.

Aidworkers were growing frustrated at problems beyond their control, and the people were getting angry. This remains the case. While looting and rioting has taken place across the city, some of this is down to the release of 4000 criminals from the city’s jail, which collapsed in the earthquake.

And this city has its dangerous spots at the best of times, with slums such as Cite Soleil no-go areas. Gang violence is common, and Brazilian-led UN peacekeepers have a reputation for a take-no-prisoners approach to dealing these groups.

Tent city: hundreds of camps like this one have been set up all over Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

UN peacekeepers were present at the delivery, and security will be needed as the aid effort ramps up over the coming days and weeks. Haitians are forming mass camps, afraid to sleep near damaged buildings.

But with 400 prisoners on the loose, homeless are feeling under threat as well. In Carrefour, a badly-hit district, one man told me he and his friends formed a protection group to ensure women and children could sleep safely, in the open.

And downtown, close to the ruined Cathedral, a charred corpse lay on the street. Shot and burnt by such vigilantes as a warning against looters and would-be thieves.

But despite the tension, a mix of relieved half-smiles and thankful blessings animated Wednesday’s aid delivery. At last, some people in had gotten something. The challenge remains however – how to sustain aid delivery to all those in need, and to ensure Haiti rebuilds in a way that does not leave it vulnerable to the inevitable next earthquake.

Poor construction means earthquakes kill more than they should. In 1989, a 7.0 earthquake in California killed dozens. Haiti’s earthquake measured the same, but the death toll here could be as high as 200,000.

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

Lenas still traumatised and in severe pain, over a week after the earthquake (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.

The international aid effort has been rightly criticized for slow delivery in the days since the earthquake. However, Haiti’s transport and communications infrastructure was rickety enough before the disaster. The earthquake left the capital a rubble-strewn mess, akin to a war zone.

Aid workers have been doing their best, for the most part. GOAL, an Irish non-governmental organization (NGO),

Medishare field hospital in Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

carried out one of the first distributions of aid by any NGO last Wednesday, delivering rice, shelter and hygiene materials donated by the US, Canadian and Irish governments.

There was enough for 300 families in this first round, leaving many who showed up disappointed at not getting anything. GOAL will return to the area, called Turgeau, this coming Saturday, to repeat the delivery to the rest of the community.

However, worries about security are stalling the delivery of aid. Although US troops are deploying alongside an enlarged UN peacekeeping mission, the impact, though tangible, has not yet led to the necessary free-flowing movement of aid into the country and on to the estimated 1.5 million Haitians left homeless.

Some are dealing with their situation well.

In Delmas, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Napoleon Donat says his neighborhood needs water, “but we have tents, and the school down the road gives us a meal a day, for now anyway.”

Donat, who lived in Brooklyn for five years, thanks God that his family survived the earthquake, but laments that “my best friend was killed.”

“Have you seen any aid workers here?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he adds in a New York-accented English, “we’ve seen some across the way,” pointing into the next block. “But by the time we get over there to try get them to come look at us, they’re already gone.”

Presidential palace lies in ruins. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Hands-on proactive agencies are hoping this can be changed. GOAL Emergency Coordinator Brian Casey says that “we are very frustrated at the slow progress overall, but we are working day and night to get things going. NGOs like GOAL are drop in the ocean, given the scale of this disaster.”

Many are looking to the US to provide the logistical support needed to unclog the aid jam into and around Haiti.

“The city is very difficult to get around, there is rubble everywhere, traffic is chaotic as the police are working at 20 percent capacity,” says Casey. “But we are hopeful that the security and logistical challenges can be dealt with in good order, so we can get on with helping the people.”

“I fully understand the anger and disappointment being felt by Haitians,” he adds.

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.

After the disaster: Notre Dame Cathedral, Port au Prince. (Photo: Simon Roughneen

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.

“I try to be a very strong Catholic,” said a woman named Joissant,. She runs a small street stall downhill from the shattered cathedral, close to a Catholic school. The earthquake took place in the evening, meaning that the children were not inside the half-collapsed school building.

“I looked up at the church”, she said. “The top (the 100-feet steeple) was swinging round and round, and ground was going updownupdownupdown. The tower fell, through the roof and down onto the floor.”

The bell from the Eglise Perpetuel lying on the street. This church is 500 yards from the cathedral, and was destroyed by the earthquake (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

The cathedral itself now looks like it was shelled. The walls still stand, but the roof collapsed, filling the apse and nave with rubble, and burying unknown numbers of clergy and laypeople.

“There was a choir singing in there when it happened”, said Joissant, pointing to an annex at the front of the building.

Behind the cathedral, the archbishop’s residence is damaged, though not heavily. Next door to that, the Catholic Radio Soleil is destroyed, with many journalists and staff  killed inside. The station was right behind the towering cathedral, and was crushed when the cathedral walls and roof crashed down upon it.

German and Dominican Republic rescue workers continue to sift through the rubble, mostly removing dead bodies, but also looking for survivors. Eight days after the disaster, two children were pulled from the wreckage of collapsed buildings elsewhere in the city.

Traveling around the city, however, one sees huge rubble heaps everywhere, many untouched since the disaster. On Tuesday, one week after the earthquake, on the hills overlooking the city, an Israeli team worked to find survivors at a four-story high school. Heavy concrete floors had pulverized the light bricks and apparently sparse steelwork beneath.

The focus is moving from rescue to delivering aid, and this has run into problems as well. The U.S. military controls the international airport, a tiny building with only one runway and capacity to station no more than six cargo aircraft at any one time. The seaport is damaged, and the streets are clogged with rubble and debris. Roaming gangs of armed men and escaped prisoners add to the dangers for distressed and bereaved survivors, as well as for the aid groups trying to get help to them.

Bus in Port-au-Prince. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

But some rescue work will continue, as people can often survive for days if caught in gaps between large slabs of masonry if there is access to water.

“So did you find Father Benoit?” I asked.

Jérémie answered, “No, he is still in there” ¬ pointing at the remains of the cathedral.

“Is he still alive?”

“We do not know. His phone battery must have died; we cannot get through to him. We have not heard anything from him in four days.”

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.

Irish telecoms operator Digicel takes a hit. Downtown Port-au-Prince. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.

Around this shell of a city, thousands of people await assistance. While there are incidents of looting and violence, people are eager to talk and desperate for help. Most of the trouble, they say, is being caused by the 4000 prisoners who escaped, unscathed, when the city’s jail was destroyed in the earthquake.

US soldiers are deploying bit-by-bit across the city, though the numbers are short of the 10,000 discussed last week. UN Secretary-General Ban ki Moon has asked for extra UN peacekeepers to bolster the Brazilian-led force that has been in Haiti since the country was ransacked by political violence in 2004.

Rescue workers search for survivors in the rubble. (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

But after squabbles between France and the US over access to the airport, now run by the Americans, another turf war looms over command-and-control of the various foreign armies in the country, and who-does-what, in terms of dealing with troublemakers and protecting aid deliveries and aid workers.

But the people just want help. Taxi driver Chevalier Jean-Claude was standing on the street, close to his home in Carrefour, one of the worst hit districts in Port-au-Prince, when the quake hit.

“For thirty, maybe thirty-five seconds, buildings were moving, falling. People were running, screaming” he said.

Unlike many other Haitians, he did not lose any family. His wife and seven children are alive.

However, his car was destroyed as his house collapsed onto the street.

“I have no money, no house, and no way to feed my family”, he said. Even if he had his car, there is little or no fuel available. At the few still-intact petrol stations around the city, people queued in the hot sun, with funnels and jerrycans, to get whatever they could.

Like hundreds of thousands of Haitians, they will sleep on the street once more tonight. Traumatized by last week’s disaster, many will not venture indoors lest aftershocks topple the thousands of half-standing buildings around the city. Riverine cracks running up and across walls and facades reminders that it is not safe to go indoors. An even stronger reminder came this(Wednesday morning, when the city was roused by a 6.1 aftershock at around 5am.

Damaged buildings will need to be knocked and replaced. But for now food, medicine, security are needed. The airport has one small runway, and can accommodate only 6 aircraft on the ground, at one time. Not enough to facilitate the vast quantities of material needed to help 3 million people affected by the disaster.

It is not for the want of trying on the part of aidworkers. Irish NGO GOAL is helping set up a field hospital and is bringing in nurses to attend to the thousands of wounded. Darren Hanniffy leads the GOAL operation in the shattered Haitian capital. He said

“Today we will distribute food and shelter to 300 families in one of the worst hit areas of Port-au-Prince”. He added “we are supporting the construction of a field hospital, and a team of volunteer nurses is on its way”. GOAL is working with an Israeli team of medics to assist in building temporary medical facilities, He said that “people on the ground here are working 24/7 to get help to the people.”

Under the rubble (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

Elsewhere other NGOs and medical volunteers are working around the clock, with limited supplies to deal with legions of injured. The bottleneck at the international airport means that medical supplies are slow to arrive, though things are picking up now.

Judy is a Haitian nurse who lives in Miami. She flew home hours after the earthquake to help out, and is now working at a temporary hospital close to the UN hq in Haiti. She says patients are dying from treatable infections, after being wounded in the earthquake. – “We are grateful for the help that the world is giving us”, she adds, “but more is needed, and it is too slow to come”.

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-/

Haitian refugees await flight to Canada at Port-au-Prince's international airport (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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’.

Destruction downtown in Port-au-Prince (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

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.