- Haiti to relocate 400,000 homeless outside capital, January 22, 2010, BBC News: “Haiti is planning to house 400,000 earthquake survivors in new tented villages outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, officials have announced. Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime said 100,000 people would initially be sent to 10 settlements near the suburb of Croix Des Bouquets. He gave no timeframe, but said the moves would start as soon as possible. An estimated 1.5 million people were left homeless by the 7.0-magnitude quake, which killed as many as 200,000…”
- Haiti plans tent cities for homeless as rebuilding begins, By Scott Wilson, Mary Beth Sheridan and Manuel Roig-Franzia, January 22, 2010, Washington Post: “The Haitian government is planning to erect 11 tent cities to house as many as 400,000 people displaced by the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, hoping to establish safer and more sanitary conditions as the country’s rebuilding begins. Most of the camps will be in and around the capital, officials said, replacing more than 500 squalid, makeshift settlements that have materialized out of desperation and despair. The plan, which is being coordinated with international relief officials, also calls for a camp to house 100,000 Haitians in the town of Croix de Bouquets, about eight miles northeast of the capital…”
- Economy in shock struggles to restart, By Simon Romero, January 21, 2010, New York Times: “The price of candles in the teeming La Saline market here has climbed 60 percent since last week’s earthquake. A box of matches is up 50 percent. A package of Perdue Chicken Franks has gone up 30 percent. As Haitians begin to turn their attention to rebuilding a crippled economy, the rapid surge in prices of crucial products is just one of the many challenges they face. The port here was also knocked out of operation, hobbling exports. The banking system, largely shut down because of fear of robberies, is struggling to restart. The earthquake destroyed the finance ministry and part of the central bank, and killed senior financial officials including Jean Frantz Richard, director of the tax collection agency…”
Category: Environment
Haiti Earthquake
- Poverty opened eyes of Haiti visitors, By Annysa Johnson, January 14, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “When Scott Hamel tries to describe the poverty that plagued Haiti even before Tuesday’s devastating earthquake, he always goes back to a young mother he met there a few years ago. She was living with her six children, two under the age of 1, in a hut the size of a walk-in closet. Her husband had gone to the Dominican Republic for work, and she had not heard from him in more than a year. She had no other family and was on the verge of being evicted. ‘Basically, she had the clothes on her back, no income and no way to feed her children,’ said Hamel of Madison, who has traveled to Haiti repeatedly as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Engineers Without Borders. ‘It was staggering to see this woman in her 30s who had nothing,’ he said. ‘It took me awhile to get my head around that.’ Nearly every story coming out of Haiti since the quake mentions its status as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. It is one thing to read about it, but many Wisconsinites have seen it firsthand, working alongside Haitians in health clinics, food kitchens, construction projects and more…”
- Impoverished, storm-prone Haiti is a magnet for disasters, By Seth Borenstein (AP), January 14, 2010, Worcerter Telegram and Gazette: “When it comes to natural disasters, Haiti seems to have a bull’s-eye on it. That’s because of a killer combination of geography, poverty, social problems, slipshod building standards and bad luck, experts say. The list of catastrophes is mind-numbing: This week’s devastating earthquake. Four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed about 800 people in 2008. Killer storms in 2005 and 2004. Floods in 2007, 2006, 2003 (twice) and 2002. And that’s just the 21st-century rundown. ‘If you want to put the worst-case scenario together in the Western Hemisphere (for disasters), it’s Haiti,’ said Richard Olson, a professor at Florida International University who directs the Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas project. ‘There’s a whole bunch of things working against Haiti. One is the hurricane track. The second is tectonics. Then you have the environmental degradation and the poverty,’ he said…”
- Haiti, Editorial, January 14, 2010, New York Times: “Once again, the world weeps with Haiti. The earthquake that struck on Tuesday did damage on a scale that scarcely could have been imagined had we all not seen the photos and videos and read the survivors’ agonizing accounts – of the sudden crumbling of mountainside slums, schools, hospitals, even the Parliament building and presidential palace. Whenever disaster strikes, we are reminded that Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere. And each time there is a disaster, this country and others help – for a while. This time must be different…”
- Helping Haiti help itself, Editorial, January 14, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Haitians have long been prey to hurricanes and coups, their nation ravaged by erosion and corruption, mudslides and marauders, poverty and violence. Now the few economic and political gains made over five years of relative stability have been buried along with thousands of corpses in the rubble of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. The presidential palace, parliament, government ministries and hospitals — indeed most of the capital of Port-au-Prince — are in ruins. An already dysfunctional state now lacks even the edifices of government. Gone too are some of the buttresses: the archbishop and his cathedral; the head of the United Nations mission and some of his top aides, who died when their headquarters collapsed…”
Temporary Housing after Hurricane Katrina
In Katrina’s aftermath, still a struggle to help, By Shaila Dewan, December 29, 2009, New York Times: “When Renaissance Village, the vast trailer park that housed Hurricane Katrina evacuees outside Baton Rouge, was closing down in May 2008, Theresa August was one of the last to leave. Babbling, singing and wearing a baby’s onesie on her head, she had to be coaxed into packing up the clothes and trash that crammed the trailer she called home. Now, Ms. August, 40, lives in a small apartment in New Orleans that she decorated with flowers and Christmas lights. A team of social workers ensures that she takes her anti-psychosis medication and gets treatment for H.I.V. infection. Still shy and fettered by a speech impediment, she can carry on conversations far more coherently than at any other time since the storm…”