My husband, Bill, works for the Department of Defense as a civilian federal agent where his current day to day responsibilities involve protecting U.S. naval assets travelling throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America.  When the 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti on January 12^th, he unpacked his bags for a scheduled trip to Panama and repacked them for the unexpected in Haiti.  Now, he has just returned after being there for almost a month.  Although his mission in Haiti wasn’t directly related to the urban and environmental issues that are the focus of this blog, some of the issues his team faced and the city he observed are definitely of interest to our readers.

Transportation Woes. Haiti’s transportation infrastructure was substandard to begin with.  When the earthquake hit, many bridges collapsed, the docks at the ports were heavily damaged and roads all over the city were blocked by buildings that were shook to rubble.  These obstacles increased the difficulty for aid to reach the Haitians in need.  Tasked with assessing ports, medical facilities, criminal threats, mass migration, allegations of orphan kidnappings, helicopter landing zones for aid distribution, and helping wherever they were needed, Bill’s team needed to move about steadily.  Initial travel proved to be difficult through the unfamiliar territory with a damaged road system.   At first, they hired locals more than eager  to earn some money to drive them around, navigate through the heavily damaged roads and translate from Creole and French to English when needed.   The people were friendly, gracious and excited to see help arrive.  Eventually, they were able to rent a car and find their own way around, as businesses began to reopen.

Haiti’s poor transportation system, washed out roads from mud slides of the past, and now earthquake damaged roads also caused horrible traffic.  It would take the team several hours to go only a few miles by car.  Gas scarcity and high prices also added to the complicated equation.  They were lucky to receive their daily ration of gas from the US military.

Given the high gas prices, normally five dollars per gallon, and extreme poverty that the Haitians live with, most Haitians primary mode of transportation is by foot.  Other common modes include bicycles and motorcycles.  Tap Taps are a popular way to get around.  These are independent trucks that operate as unregulated taxis.

Garbage Collection. Haiti lacks many of the basic city services that we take for granted.  Garbage and trash pile up on the side of the road.  When the pile gets big enough, they burn it.  The smell of burning plastic resonates through the air.  Port-au-Prince ranked 3^rd as the dirtiest city in the world in the 2007 Quality of Life Report produced by Mercer Human Resource Consulting.  The report ranks 215 cities throughout the world based on levels of air pollution, waste management, water potability, hospital services, medical supplies and the presence of infectious disease.

Water Pollution. The rivers that run through Haiti and the Caribbean waters that surround it are used for everything that you can imagine.  People wash their clothes in it, dump biological waste in it, bathe their children in it, and drink it.  The water’s edge along the coastline is covered in garbage.  The water running down the street gutter is brown.  Bill did not want to step in the gutter water for fear of what he would bring home on his shoes.  Just after that thought ran through his head, he saw a woman bend over and drink from it.

Deforestation. Most of Haiti’s countryside has been deforested and used to meet basic needs.  As was pointed out in past articles, the deforestation has led to a lack of wood to properly build buildings.  Without the proper support, the buildings in Port-au-Prince could not handle the magnitude of the earthquake, contributing to their collapse and the demise of over 200,000 people.

Recycled Clothing. Bill noted that a lot of their clothing looks like our old clothing.  Our clothing is apparently being recycled to them.  He saw a “Where’s the Beef” t-shirt and a “Frankie says Relax” t-shirt.  He even saw several people wearing my old alma maters t-shirts, Florida State and Georgia Tech.

Toys from Trash. Smiles were starting to come back to the children’s faces by the time Bill left.  With so little that they have, they still are children.  They still like to play.  They made kites out of trash bags, pull toys from empty water bottles and toy cars from old cans.

A World Community. On a brighter side, a tragedy like this does bring the world together.  Makeshift medical tents from teams of almost every country you can think of – Jordan, Canada, France, Germany, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Israel, Russia, the United States, and so on – were cropping up all over the country.  Bill met so many amazing people that put their home lives on hold, hopped on a plane without a formal plan in hand to come help.  They came as volunteers, packed their own food and brought supplies, because their hearts led them there.  I am proud of many of our own friends and neighbors that did just that.

“Haiti Normal” as it is called, is starting to return.  Cleanup efforts have begun.  Markets are reopening.  Bill bought local art from vendors on the street.  In so many ways, the Haitian people live much more sustainably than us.  But in so many ways, they are destroying the environment that surrounds them.  With all eyes on Haiti, we can learn a lesson or two from them, while trying to help reverse the horrible cycle of poverty and environmental destruction they are stuck in.  Now it’s your turn.  As part of the international community that is helping Haiti, what do you think are the key pieces to rebuilding this country?

Haiti is a country that has suffered for decades with widespread poverty, political corruption, environmental destruction, and natural disasters.  Last week’s earthquake was devastating and made worse by the situation it was already in.  The Haitians desperate situation has lead to 97% deforestation in the country, which has led to a lack of wood available to construct buildings properly.   The poorly built buildings crumbled when the earthquake hit, taking thousands of lives.

Following is a link to a New York Times piece filmed three weeks before the earthquake.  It highlights the links between poverty, natural resource mismanagement and the consequences that have occurred from past natural disasters and from last week’s earthquake.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLmpFHSsGD0

As devastating as this earthquake is, it is an opportunity for the Haitians to have their problems brought to the forefront of the world.  It is an opportunity for us, as Americans, to see how the country has been going in the wrong direction and how we can help to turn this pattern around.  Along with rebuilding efforts, restoration of the country’s natural resources, namely reforestation, will also need to occur.

From New York Times | Flawed Building Likely a Big Element

Engineers and architects who have worked in or visited Haiti say that substandard design, inadequate materials and shoddy construction practices likely contributed to the collapse of many buildings in the earthquake that struck Tuesday.

Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit design group based in San Francisco, said he was “horrified” when he visited Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves last October to assess the quality of construction there.

Mr. Sinclair said that design and construction were far worse than in other developing countries he had visited. “In Haiti, most if not all of the buildings have major engineering flaws,” he said.

Most houses and other structures are built of poured concrete or block, there being very little lumber available due to mass deforestation, said Alan Dooley, a Nashville architect who designed a medical clinic, built of reinforced concrete, in Petite Rivière de Nippes, a fishing village 50 miles west of Port-au-Prince.

Concrete is very expensive — much of the cement for it comes from the United States, Mr. Dooley said — so some contractors cut corners by adding more sand to the mix. The result is a structurally weaker material that deteriorates rapidly, he said. Steel reinforcing bar is also expensive, he said, so there is a tendency to use less of it with the concrete.

Building codes are limited or nonexistent, so columns and other elements made from concrete are often relatively thin, designed without proper margins of safety. “We would double the design strength, just to give it a factor of safety,” Mr. Dooley said, referring to practices in the United States. “There they’d design it to what it would hold.”

Concrete blocks are often substandard too, said Peter Haas, executive director of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a nonprofit organization that is working on several projects in Haiti. Many of them are made in small batches at people’s homes, and the quality can vary. “When you’re buying blocks at the store you really have no idea of where they’re from,” Mr. Haas said. “And all it takes is for the block that was made at home to collapse.”

When builders in Haiti do take disasters into account in their designs, their most recent experience has been with hurricanes, the last major earthquake having occurred two centuries ago. “Newer construction has been developed to withstand hurricanes, not earthquakes,” said John McAslan, a London architect who has studied Haitian buildings, working with the Clinton Global Initiative. “If you engineer for one you’re not necessarily covering the other.”

Mr. Dooley said that his original design for the medical clinic called for a steel roof, but that was changed to a reinforced concrete one to better withstand hurricane-force winds. The building survived the earthquake with apparently little damage, he said.

But many other concrete roofs presumably collapsed, adding to the loss of life. Mr. Sinclair said he had seen houses where builders put concrete roofs on top of low-grade blocks. “Then it just pancakes,” he said.

Full | Flawed Building Likely a Big Element