STORIES FROM HAITI: Robert Hodgson, RedR Trustee and interim Country Director

The incredible losses of life during the Haiti earthquake also meant the loss of vital skills needed for the recovery process. Robert Hodgson, RedR Trustee and interim Country Director in Haiti, explains why disaster relief should be about supporting local people in reconstructing their own lives.

“When I arrived in Haiti, three months after the earthquake, it was still very much in the emergency stage of the response. Before I arrived I’d been prepared by all the media coverage we’d had of the earthquake, but even so it was quite distressing to see just how widespread the damage was and how it affected just about everybody in Port-au-Prince. There were large quantities of un-cleared debris all over the place and most people were living in camps in the streets.

“Most of the people affected by the disaster had got some sort of shelter but in most cases it was still only plastic sheeting. Most people also had access to water supplies because there were bore holes from where relief agencies could get water. But for sometime after the earthquake a lot of people had had nothing at all.

“There was a very large number of portable toilets to cover sanitation issues, but the problem still remained of what to do with them and where to empty what was in them. There were trucks driving around all over the place full of sewage, with the possibilities of leakage and so on. Disposal of sanitation was a real problem because Port-au-Prince had never had working sewers, and so there was no way of disposing of human excrement and nowhere to treat it.

“Having untreated sewage provides the grounds for the breeding of flies and other disease vectors. The inability to wash satisfactorily also has a very detrimental effect on human health. And I think it all contributes to a great feeling of despair amongst anybody who is in such a situation."


Rebuilding skills

“The really devastating thing about the earthquake was that it took out a lot of the skills that you need for any type of recovery. In most disasters that doesn’t happen because the people with the skills are not necessarily on the spot at the time of the disaster. In Haiti the skills were missing.

“The big challenge for RedR was getting the skills that were needed back into the population. We started with simple stuff like warehousing and logistics and worked up to more technical Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) issues.

“Large organisation like the Haitian Red Cross involved approximately 50,000 Haitians undertaking skilled jobs such installing water systems and sanitation. There really were a very large number of Haitians involved in the relief effort and most of them were undertaking roles they weren’t previously prepared for."

Long-term reconstruction

“The really big on-going need in Haiti is to sort out the land planning issue so that they can start reconstruction. The main reason that there hasn’t been a great deal of reconstruction is because the land registry disappeared during the earthquake so ownership is going to be contentious. You can’t really clear large areas of the city if you don’t know who owns it. The entire city needs to be rebuilt but planning it is major long term activity, partly because of the need to reconstruct a lot of the services like water supply and sewage.

“It seemed to me, coming away from Haiti, that it very much enforced the RedR view that disaster relief and recovery should be about supporting local people in reconstructing their own lives.”


Robert Hodgson is a RedR Trustee and worked as RedR’s interim Country Director in Haiti in April 2010. Robert organised the delivery of key trainings in the areas of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) as part of RedR’s programme in response to the Haiti earthquake.

Read STORIES FROM HAITI: Nicolette Bernard, Nurse & Hygiene Promoter

Read more about RedR's work in Haiti.

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