Life in the front line of the Haiti Earthquake

Will we just rebuild the chaos in Haiti?

 

I went to the Jacmel area last week and came back both very impressed with what is happening in the Southeast Department and even more worried about what is happening in Port-au-Prince. We had sponsored a two-day workshop to bring together the local authorities and the international organizations to discuss the next steps for rebuilding the Southeast. There was some squabbling about where to have the tent cities and what the priorities should be. However, the authorities also had a clear idea of the work that needed to be done and the reconstruction was straight forward. They knew how many houses needed to be fixed and how much support the rural areas needed to support the influx of the population. It is easy to imagine a large reconstruction program in the Southeast that succeeds in building back better.

I can't say the same for the Port-au-Prince area. Port-au-Prince was a chaotic nightmare before the earthquake hit. of the four main roads connecting Port-au-Prince and Petionville, only one is four-lane. All four are basically parking lots during the morning and evening commute. Poor housing are consisted of houses frequently built on top of each other. There were no roads between the houses and frequently no sanitation or running water. 

 
Google Earth images of a neighborhood just off of Canape Verte before and after the earthquake.

Today, I see people rebuilding their houses right where they collapsed. Some argue that it is too early to talk about longer term issues. I fear instead that the window of opportunity is closing. Yes, we need to focus on relief and temporary housing. However, if Port-au_prince is to be rebuilt better, drastic action is needed. Haiti needs strong leadership to clearly state that a new urbanization plan will be imposed on Port-au-Prince. Any houses that do not conform to that plan will be demolished. In the Southeast, people can rebuild where they lived. In Port-au-Prince, they should not. that change will require strong leadership and the order needs to come soon.

In terms of basic reorganization, I would love to see the following:

• A commitment to widen the other three main arteries connecting Petionville and Port-au-Prince: Panamerican, Canape Vert, and Route Frere. This would involve demolishing houses on either side of the road.
• Rehabilitation of the main artery through downtown (Blvd Harry Truman) including limiting access to the road.
• Completion of the bypass through Carrefour (currently blocked since the road passes through the country's fuel depot.
• Widening of the Grand Rue to allow it to take the local traffic that can no longer pass through Blvd. Harry Truman.
• Standardization of the roads through town to allow for parking on the sides of the road and for trucks to pass in Carrefour, Cite Soliel, and the other areas that have grown rapidly.

This would require relocating tens of thousands of people--not an easy or cheap decision. To make this work, neighborhoods would need to be more dense than they are today. Currently, most neighborhoods are still single-family homes (or shacks). Instead, Port-au-Prince needs low rise apartment buildings--five to eight stories. This is a far more efficient way to house city populations and is the solution in nearly every city in the world. I realize that people will not be eager to move into apartments and that it will be critical to build the apartments well. However, the two most seismically active cities in the world are Tokyo and San Fransisco. How many poor people in these cities live in single family houses?

At the same time, there should be a large program to improve the infrastructure in the other main towns in Haiti. We don't want to suck everyone back into Port-au-Prince.

It will take strong leadership to bring about these changes. I believe that it is easier to force changes through during a crisis, as President Obama did, than to wait for the dust to settle and calmly talk about it. I worry that by the time the leadership in Haiti is ready to talk about these changes, it will be too late and we will have rebuilt the chaos.

A month after the earthquake

 

It has been a month since the earthquake destroyed Port-au-Prince. Tomorrow was declared as the start of a week of mourning by the Haitian government. As I look back on the month, I am amazed at the changes, proud of some of my accomplishments, and saddened by my mistakes. Following are some of the main points:

• Instant Response: As soon as I heard about the earthquake, I began mobilizing to respond. We were fortunate to have a good relationship with the American Chamber of Commerce in the Dominican Republic. Their Executive Director called me the night of the earthquake and promised the first of the funds. The next morning, we loaded two of our vehicles with supplies and crossed the border. We were in Haiti within 24 hours of the earthquake. That was the hardest visit. Collecting the dead was the highest priority. Many people were trapped in buildings. There were no telephones and very little information.
• Quick Relief: For the next five days, I drove back and forth between Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo. I escorted trucks into Haiti and brought people out. It was a hard, stressful time as we tried to rush whatever supplies we could find into Haiti. For the first week, there was very little available and very little organized.
• Organized Relief: One week after the earthquake hit, I was given responsibility for running our Haiti office. Up to that point, I had been trying to support the existing office, but with no clear authority. I spent the next two weeks full time in Haiti. I struggled to reorganize our office to allow us to focus on the immediate response while still providing support to our staff--half of them had their houses badly damaged in the quake. It was an exciting time as we tried to figure out how to maximize our impact.
• Moving from Relief to Reconstruction: Three weeks after the earthquake, I slowed down a bit and began focusing on the medium-term tasks of running the two country offices and preparing for the reconstruction work. I have gone back to working with our project managers, helping them to restart or accelerate their projects. Our earthquake response continues quite nicely--we have a very active warehouse and are doing regular food distributions. However, it is one of several proejcts we manage rather than my sole focus (our other work includes a child protection program, community-driven development work in the slums of Port-au-Prince and another in rural Haiti, and some potable water projects plus my cross-border program).

I know that I have risen well to this challenge. I have always been an avid reader of management books and these skills helped me well. Two books stand out in particular. One is What Got you Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall's main point is that the behaviors that we normally credit with our success are not the ones that help us rise to a higher position. In my case, I consider myself to be a very participatory decision maker. I prefer to discuss decisions with my staff and to come to a consensus. However, this disaster required us to move quickly. I have become a very direct person who rarely discusses decisions--I don't hesitate to reverse a decision when someone points out a mistake, but I rarely debate what we need to do. 

 

The second one is Linchpin by Seth Godin. Ironically, I had received an advance copy of the book and was set to go to the launch in New York City. Seth stresses that in today's difficult environment, we need to rise up and become indispensable linchpins in our organizations--to be willing to go out on a limb and create the changes that are needed. I have never been as indispensable as I am today. Having the role of a linchpin described so clearly has given me the courage to push harder than I would otherwise have dared.

My mistakes have been in trying to move to fast--pushing people into changes that they were not ready to accept and overlooking details that were then mismanaged. Someone said that if 7 out of 10 decisions are good, then you are doing well. That is probably my success rate. I hope that those around me help me catch and correct the 3 bad ones.

I don't know what will happen next and where we will go. I am both proud of what we have accomplished and sad that we could not do more. I can't keep up my current pace for much longer, but I do know that this experience has changed me. I hope for the better.

It all changed in an instant

Last Monday, my job was to run a small cross-border conflict program. Today, I am running a relief program for the largest disaster to hit the Americas. Last week, I was actively looking for a non-profit that I could direct.  Now I don't know what I want to do. It is hard to remember life before the earthquake.

I have worked a number of disasters, but mainly floods and hurricanes. Earthquakes are much harder. They come without warning and change everything. I'm not ready to write about the impact on people. It is just amazing that everyone's life was changed in an instant.

I don't know where we will go from here. I don't know how Haiti will change. I don't know what will happen next. I do know that everything can change in an instant.

 

A personal account of the response to the earthquake in Haiti.

Every now and then, life hands you a chance to make a difference. I am fortunate to be in the right place at the right time  I used to run the Pan American Development's Haiti disaster program before I moved to the Dominican Republic to run the border program. Therefore, when the earthquake hit, I was already in place to respond. With all telephone communication cut off in Haiti, we had no idea what had happened to our staff. Wednesday morning, I was able to get some cash and supplies together and drove from Santo Domingo to Haiti.

It is a seven hour drive and I spent the whole drive talking on the phone and getting updates on the situation. We received a message from our office that our staff was safe, but we were unable to talk directly with anyone. I crossed the border around 6pm and made to the outskirts of Port-au-Prince around 7pm. As I drove into town, I began seeing the first impacts--a cinder block wall that fell here or a damaged wall there. A bit further in, I saw whole walls down, then began seeing collapsed roofs. We made it to our safe house around 7:30pm and settled in for the night.

Everyone in the area was still very shaken. Even though the house was completely intact, the Haitians were sleeping outside in fear of another quake. During the night I felt two strong aftershocks.

In the morning, we headed into town. The damage was amazing. I didn't go near the epicenter, but the damage was everywhere. Many of the buildings that were damaged had been badly built, but others seemed quite solid. We touched base with the Direction de Protection Civile (the Haitian government agency charged with managing the disaster). They had no resources and were beyond swamped. We found some of our staff and began organizing our office again. By this point, I had distributed all of the resources that I had brought and used up a third a tank of gas--their is little fuel available and I knew I could not run out. With no means of communication, I headed back to the Dominican Republic to get more supplies and to get back in touch with my Dominican and Washington offices.

It is a crazy time. We are getting lots of support (www.panamericanrelief.org) both in cash and in supplies. However logistics are such a mess that it is hard to do much. Tomorrow I hope to get our office in Haiti up and running to make it easier to provide supplies. There is so much to be done that the little that we can do seems insignificant. Yet, everyone needs to do their part.

I try to avoid thinking of reconstruction. So little was done after the four hurricanes hit Haiti in 2007. So little was done after the hurricane hit Gonaives in 2005. How will Haiti ever get back on its feet.

 

Poverty in Haiti

One of the biggest questions for ending poverty in the Caribbean is whether or not it could be done in Haiti. I've lived in Haiti for six years and have worked with Haiti for twelve. I love the people and love the country and it is constantly breaking my heart. 2008 was a rough year. Although things had started off well, the country fell apart first with the riots in March that led to the collapse of the Alexis government, the debacle over the naming of the new Prime Minister, the four storms that devastated the country, and now the collapse of the school in Petionville. Things continually seem to go wrong for Haiti. Would it be possible to end extreme poverty in Haiti?

Despite all of these problems, there is some progress being made and a lot of good work is being done. My organization has been working with the rural poor for twenty five years. We've helped plant millions of trees, repaired countless kilometers of roads, trained numerous farmers, and helped the government to establish their disaster response strategy (despite the very high level of flooding, the number of deaths this year was dramatically less than in 2004!). There are other great organizations like Fonkoze, CARE, ORE. and World Vision to name just a few.

The government is also trying hard. We work closely with the national offices for disaster preparedness and for border development as well as with the parliament. There are a lot of people within the government that are trying hard to make the country work.

Yet the situation in Haiti is not improving. In a talk that Anne Hastings of Fonkoze gave in September, she stated that half of all Haitians live in extreme poverty (the citation comes from a nice presentation that you can download). What would it take to pull these 4.3 million people up to poverty? Given the weak physical and governmental infrastructure, it is possible?

Conversely, if Haiti is not brought out of extreme poverty, what happens to all the Haitians that continue to flee Haiti in search of a better life? How could extreme poverty be ended in the Dominican Republic when thousands of Haitians continue to move to the DR in search of a better life?

It seems that one of the challenges of this movement will be to figure out how to balance Haiti's extremely high needs with the easier challenges of reducing poverty in the rest of the Caribbean. What do you think? How could we do this?