Haiti earthquake - first impressions

RedR Member Maggie Heraty was part of the joint RedR and Bioforce team that flew out to Haiti on 2 February, to assess the training and support needs of the humanitarian community, who are providing relief to the local population following the devastating earthquake. Maggie shares her thoughts from the first few days…

Diary entries from days 1 – 2 
                                                                                                     
We arrived at our camp in Port-au-Prince at 14:00 on Wednesday 3 February, and set about pitching our tent. On the drive down from the Dominican Republic border, the damage soon became evident. It started with just the odd house or wall knocked down, and got progressively worse as we neared the capital.

Everywhere you look buildings of different shapes and sizes have buckled; a small house on top of a car, a house leaning at a 45° angle with the front wall missing and all the cupboard doors hanging open. Some of the bigger buildings had literally collapsed like packs of cards.

And everywhere there were camps; several quite formal ones with smart tents in neat rows, and hundreds of tiny informal ones, set up wherever there was some clear space. In these camps people had cobbled together shelters from table cloths, sheets, cardboard boxes and odd bits of corrugated iron. One shelter was made from just a bed sheet weighted down along two sides with one corner held up by a pole, like a beach windbreak. Many people have made signs saying ‘SOS’ or ‘Help us for the love of God’ in English, French and Spanish.

On our first day out in the field we got to see the UN humanitarian compound at the airport; all very orderly with big meeting tents, little personal tents, ropes for queues and labels on doors. This is where most of the cluster meetings are held.

Our local contact showed us his house, which was 10 years in the making but is now unfit for any future purpose aside from firewood. He and his family escaped unharmed because the house was made of wood, but still at a terrible cost in money, effort, and heartbreak. He said there was scant regard for building regulations in Haiti, and because all the houses were built so close together, as one house fell sideways they all followed suite – like dominoes.

On a hill in Port-au-Prince we looked across a ravine to where a whole shantytown of houses had slid down to the bottom of the valley; no one will ever know how many people died there. Better documented is the maternity hospital that collapsed on top of pregnant women and new mums. All that remains now is a tiny piece of wall with a mural of happy children.

We saw one of only two churches that survived the quake (and plenty that did not). Even the cathedral collapsed and the Monsignor was killed. The result of this quake is not just a loss of life and but of Haiti’s history and culture.

The effect of the catastrophe on the minutiae of people’s lives is beginning to show. We saw enormous queues outside every mobile phone office, as people tried to replace their lost phones and reclaim their old numbers - how else are they to trace their friends and family? At the ‘Voila!’ phone company, we saw a young man claiming his ‘prize’ of a moped (in lurid ‘Voila!’ lime green). It was heartening to see something nice happening among all the heartbreak, but neither he nor the watching hordes seemed very excited about it. There is a lot of resignation, with people stunned into numbness.

The land registry has been destroyed so people wanting to rebuild will not be able to prove they own the plot under the rubble. And the office with all the registration information has gone too, so no one can prove whether they are Haitian or not, or get a passport. The Ministry of Education has also gone, along with any records of the vocational training institutes that we wanted to know about.

It gets very sticky from about 12 noon, especially for people with no shade (including aid workers trying to find satellites). Clouds build up and the estimates of an early rainy season seem plausible to me, as do the prospects of cholera, etc. By the time it cools off around 4 pm, the late afternoon mosquitoes come out, the ones that carry dengue fever. Then at 6pm it’s deathly dark and by the early hours quite pleasantly cool. I wonder about the risks of sexual and gender-based violence in these camps. The aids rate is low by African standards but high enough to be of concern.

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