Daniel O'Neil

A Sad 10th Anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake

A first responder stands near the rubble that was a children's hospital in Pétion -Ville. The Royal Oasis Hotel is in the background.

I am sadden that so many of the articles on the 10^th anniversary of the Haiti earthquake seem to blame the mess in Haiti today on the earthquake response. Sometimes I feel that Haiti is like a drug addict. You can provide them with all the help in the world, but in the end, they have to take responsibility for the choices that they make.

I’m a civil engineer and had worked on disaster management in Haiti before the earthquake. The engineering community knew that Haiti’s building code was not only decades out of date, but never being enforced. A couple of years earlier, a school had collapsed killing scores of children. There were plenty of warning, but nothing was done.

During the earthquake response, I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity. The US was just coming out of its financial crisis, but both private and public donations were incredibly generous. Of course the response was messy and inefficient. But the response to a large disaster is always messy and inefficient. The goal is to move quickly, not to carefully consider each decision. As I wrote earlier, I thought that the Haiti earthquake response was just as effective as the response to the Ebola in West Africa. Yet, the Ebola responders were hailed as heroes and the earthquake responders were scorned.

During the years after the earthquake, Haiti continued to grow quickly. All the major hotels expanded, the Marriott and Best Western built hotels. The streets were paved not only in Port-au-Prince, but in every major town. By 2015, Haiti looked better than it had before the earthquake.I felt that the earthquake response was a success.

Then Haiti flubbed its national elections. The government was forced to cancel the second round of the presidential elections and President Martelly handed over power to a caretaker government. The scandal broke over the handling of the Venezuelan government’s program that allowed Haiti to obtain fuel on credit (the Petro-Caribe Program) which provided the government with around $1.7 billion for projects, many of which were never completed. On top of all of this, Haiti was hit by a Category 5 hurricane.

I returned to Haiti in May and have been sadden by what I see. The economy is in shambles and the government’s attempts to remove a fuel subsidy resulted in wide spread protests. There is little investment happening and little hope that Haiti can pull itself out of this crisis. There seems to be such deep mistrust between the government and the opposition that no comprise appears possible. The international community seems to be adopting a policy of tough love: “We won’t bail you out of this one.”

When I left Haiti in May 2010, I figured that I was done with Haiti. I knew that if I stuck around, it would break my heart. I love Haiti and love the work that I am doing. But when I lift my head and look around, my heart breaks. In the end, outsiders can only do so much. For Haiti to move forward, the Haitian politicians need to figure out how to work together. Without political stability, there we will be stuck in this viscous circle of no private investments, a declining economy, and growing civil unrest.This time it is up to Haiti to solve this crisis.

What would I do if I was in charge of the American Red Cross?

After I published my post last week on the American Red Cross (ARC), a few people have asked me what I would do if put in charge of it. Given all of the bad publicity that they have generated with their response to each major disaster, they certainly need to change their approach and to rebuild trust. The ARC plays a critical role in disaster response. They have an incredible ability to raise funds and are part of a broad international organization that has branches in nearly every country. They are perfectly placed to provide leadership on disasters all over the world.

So how do they pull themselves out of their deep hole and reestablish their leadership? I would suggest focusing on the following three areas:

1. Figure out what they are best in the world at doing and focus on it: The ARC seems to try to be all things to all people. They provide emergency kits, build shelters, feed people, finance grants, rebuild communities, and on and on. Sometimes they work through the local Red Cross, sometimes they set up their own organization and work around the local partner. Instead, I would have the ARC keep only a small number of high level experts who would implement only through the local Red Crosses and other partner organizations. The role of the ARC team members would be similar to the role of the OFDA staff. They would provide technical assistance to their partners and review grant requests. By being in the field and focused on implementation, they could help their partners be flexible in their approach. Given that the ARC is an NGO, they ought to be the most flexible of the funding organizations. By having highly trained people in the field, these experts could be trusted to guide the funding decisions.
   
   
2. Embrace Radical Transparency: Since the ARC will be subcontracting out most of the work, it will be easier for them to be very transparent. Their management costs should be around 10-20% of the donations that they receive. This would cover all of their home office costs and the costs for their field teams. The rest would be given out in grants. They can require that all funded proposals are published and have an open database that tracks the results. Financial data should only be published at the line item level (showing for example how much goes into all salaries but not showing how much an individual is paid). In this way, it will be clear not only what the ARC is doing but how their money is spread around. After all, the money being spent isn’t really the ARC’s money—it is money donated through the ARC to help the disaster victims. By having the funded proposals published, other organizations can see what is being done and better understand both how to coordinate with the implementer and how to learn from the funded approaches. This would encourage learning by doing and improve the quality of proposals over time.
   
   
3. Publish Evaluations Consistently: Because the ARC is focused on being the best in the world at what they do and on being radically transparent, it only makes sense that they conduct thorough evaluations and publish the results. Yes, these will highlight mistakes and shortcomings and will sometimes be embarrassing both for the ARC and for their partners. Implementing projects in a disaster or post-disaster environment is tough. You have to move fast which means making mistakes. But we shouldn’t be repeating the same mistakes. If the ARC committed to conducting thorough evaluations and publishing the results, the ARC could help share best practices and prevent repeated mistakes. Besides, as most politicians have learned, the best way to avoid a public scandal is to own up to your shortcomings.

The ARC ought to be a very powerful force for good and a key actor in every major disaster. Instead, their brand seems to be continually weakening. Each scandal hurts not only the ARC but every NGO who ends up painted with the same brush. 

Why is the Ebola Response considered a success and the Haiti Earthquake Response considered a failure?

The International Response to the Ebola Outbreak was a huge success. Back in September, it seemed as if the Ebola outbreak was spinning out of control. When the death toll didn't seem high enough, the stories became that the toll was under reported and stories that the outbreak could plunge Liberia back into civil war.Remember the September 23 New York Times headline: Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million in Four Months, CDC Estimates?

 

Instead, the number of new cases began to decline in late November. By late December, they had slowed to a trickle. Liberia has only had 12 cases in the last 21 days. Guinea and Sierra Leone are down to less than 200 new cases a week. The total case load will likely not exceed 25,000. This dramatic turnaround was a direct result of the strong international response.

Three activities were key to stopping the spread of the Ebola:

1. Community Awareness: Ebola was spread through contact with the bodies of those that it had killed or were dying. Funeral rites had to change. People had to be convinced to give their loved ones over to foreign doctors draped in protective gear. Physical contact had to be limited. Changing attitudes is hard, but this was key to slowing the spread of Ebola. Some organizations took this on as a primary mission through radio messages and posters that still blanked Liberia. Others added this component to their work such as distributing Ebola awareness information to the farmers with whom they work.
2. Safe Burials: An Ebola victim is hardly contagious until he is so sick that he can hardly move. His body remains highly contagious long after he has died. Touching the body of an Ebola victim is one of the easiest ways to contract Ebola. Traditionally, mourners would hug the corpse of their loved one to say goodbye. Stopping that practice was a key component of the community awareness. But bodies still had to be disposed of. In Liberia, the US government funded a large program to provide safe burials for all Ebola victims. This was very dangerous work and done very effectively by Global Communities. It is probably the reason that Ebola disappeared first in Liberia even though it had been hit the hardest.
3. Constructing the Ebola Treatment Units: As the Ebola outbreak was growing, there was not enough room to treat the victims. The few treatment units were overwhelmed and the centers were forced to turn away people who were clearly very sick. Building more treatment units became an international priority. Once there were enough treatment units to house those who needed care, it was possible to isolate those sick with Ebola and prevent them from contaminating others. It also became easier to trace their contacts and seek out others that might become sick.

I believe that a decade from now, we will talk about the Ebola response as one of the great victories of foreign assistance. The international response was critical in turning the tide on the epidemic. Those people who went to Liberia to help and those who stayed in country are the heroes that saved West Africa and the rest of the world from a terrible disease.

The response to the Haiti Earthquake was also a great success and yet is frequently portrayed as a failure. Five years after the earthquake, Haiti’s economy is stronger than it has been in decades. There is more electricity, government services function better, and there are even twice as many international-standard hotel rooms. Does the International Community not get any credit for helping to rebuild Haiti?

In both cases, there was great chaos in the response. In Haiti, one of the biggest wastes of money was building camps and temporary shelters that ended up housing people who had never lost their home in the first place and became very difficult to close. In Liberia, one of the biggest wastes was the construction of the Ebola Treatment Units—although desperately needed in the beginning, construction of new ones continued long after the need for the units had disappeared. There were still units being built in January when there were only a handful of cases of Ebola. In both cases, once a need is identified and projects are funded, it is very hard to redirect that funding.

I loved that Time magazine named the Ebola Fighters as Person of the Year for 2014. I think that those who responded to the Haiti earthquake and those who donated to support it deserved the same honor in 2010.

Getting Lucky in Bangladesh

Here in Bangladesh you have been very lucky. It has been two hundred years since your last major earthquake. But for how long will your luck last? With its proximity to an active fault, very weak soils, dense population, and poor controls on construction, the next earthquake will be a terrible disaster.

I repeated these lines over and over while working our booth at a safety conference for factory owners in Bangladesh. Dhaka is a scary place for earthquakes. Very little of the construction is designed to resist even a small earthquake. The government’s own reports highlight the risk—with a 6.0 earthquake (10 times weaker than the 2010 Haiti earthquake), 70% of the buildings will be badly damaged including the hospitals and other emergency facilities. Roads and rail lines would be damaged. The airport would be closed. Hundreds of thousands of people could die.

This was my first visit to Dhaka. I spent five days talking with people at the expo, visiting factories, and driving around the city. I came away with very mixed feelings and a deep fascination for the country.

Having spent so much of my time in Haiti, I naturally found myself comparing Dhaka and Port-au-Prince. Both are poor cities with weak infrastructure and both are struggling to grow and modernize. Dhaka is a dramatically bigger city with bigger assets and much bigger problems. Traffic has been Dhaka’s bane for many years. From early in the morning until late at night, traffic crawls through the city. It can take three hours to get from one part of the city to another. Pollution is another bad problem—a heavy haze that hangs over the city.

At the same time, the city is growing well. A handful of overpasses are being built. There are beautiful new buildings. I felt a strong sense of optimism and hope—that Bangladesh was moving forward. The quality of the buildings is also improving. Many of the new buildings appeared to be well built. Perhaps if Bangladesh can remain lucky for another 50 years, then perhaps be ready for the next earthquake.

Le Grande Rue Languishes while Petionville booms

Le Grande Rue--the historic buisness center of Port-au-Prince

For the first time in quite a long time, I ventured into the traditional heart of Port-au-Prince. It was a sad sight. Most of the buildings along the main street (Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessaline or Le Grande Rue as it is commonly known) were so severely damaged that they were unusable. Vendors squatted in the shade of the porches selling their goods while sunlight streamed through the shattered building behind them. Although all the loose rubble was gone, there were few signs of the reconstruction.

Even before the earthquake, this area was withering. The streets were a mess and never drained. The roads were blocked by traditional market vendors with stalls extending into the street. Crime had become a bad problem. Most businesses had moved to Petionville. 

Then came the earthquake. The New York Times beautifully captured the devastation on Le Grand Rue with a  sweeping panarama. As the panorama shows, large number of the buildings collapsed or became unstable. The National Palace is only a few blocks away and also crumbled. Throughout 2010, the government talked of the need to develop a master plan to rebuild the area. President Preval imposed a moratorium on construction to ensure that all new construction would follow the master plan. But then no plan was ever approved.

In 2011, Digicel's CEO, Dennis O'Brien stepped in to rebuild the Iron Market--a bizarre  19th Century Egyptian train station turned outdoor market. He spent $12 million to rebuild the market to make it better than it had ever been--a beautiful symbol of the rebirth of Port-au-Prince. 

President Martelly has rescinded the construction ban, but little has been done. The market remains beautiful, but it still stands alone. It wouldn't take much of an earthquake to bring many of these crumbling buildings down on those squatting under them.

I found my visit to the center of town to be quite striking due to the contrast with Petionville. I spend most of my time in Petionville where the traces of the earthquake are largely gone. New hotels, restaurants, and shopping complexes have sprung up all over. It is easy to believe that Haiti is better off now than before the earthquake--Petionville is booming.

Naturally money follows money--people are building in Petionville because others are building in Petionville. Perhaps the rebirth of downtown Port-au-Prince will only start when the government begins rebuilding its home--the palace, the parliament building, and the ministries. We can only hope that this starts soon. 

 

It is not about the tents

Cite Soleil--is this really any better than a tent?: Photo by Jordon Michael Zuniga

When journalists discuss the progress of reconstruction in Haiti, they frequently cite the number of people still living in tents as an indication of how much work is left to be done. In the New York Times recent article about housing, Deborah Sontag wrote:

Two and a half years after the earthquake, despite billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, the most obvious, pressing need — safe, stable housing for all displaced people — remains unmet.

She later went on to state that 390,000 people that were displaced by the earthquake remain homeless.

I do not dispute that 390,000 people still live in tents and that they live in terrible conditions. However, at least a million other people live in tin shacks in places like Cite Soliel. Their living conditions are no better than those who live in tents plus they have to pay rent for their shack.

Living conditions for Haiti’s poorest were terrible before the earthquake. Many people moved into camps not because they lost their house, but because they did not have a decent house before the earthquake. I strongly agree that one of Haiti’s most pressing needs is for safe, stable housing. I hope that this is for all of Haiti’s poor—both urban and rural—and not just for those living in tents.

 

Responding to the Haiti Earthquake--my story

The Pan American Development Foundation put together a video to thank the Caterpillar Foundation for the support that they gave to us following the Haiti earthquake. It features me telling the story of how we responded. I am very pleased with how it turned out:

Two years later: a long slow fight

photo by Jordan Michael of Red 1 Studios

Two years ago, the ground in Port-au-Prince shook and tens of thousands of buildings collapsed. The January 12^th earthquake was the worst disaster to ever hit the Americas. The early days after the earthquake were unimaginable. When I drive through some of the neighborhoods that I visited that first week, I get terrible flashbacks. Poor Haiti had been in such bad shape before the earthquake, I just couldn’t imagine how it would ever get rebuilt.

As we commemorate the second anniversary of the earthquake, there are lots of stories highlighting what has and has not been done. A lot of articles focus on the apparent slow progress with headlines like Haiti 2 years later: Half a million still in camps. Except that most people are not in camps because they lost their house and are waiting for someone to rebuild it. They are in the camps because they are desperately poor and have nowhere to turn. The Miami Heralds video, Nous Boke: Two Years Later nicely highlights this problem by talking with people living in the distant Corail camp who are desperate for work.

Nou Bouke: Two years later from The Miami Herald on Vimeo.

This desperation existed well before the earthquake. The earthquake made a bad situation much worse. The important question is where should Haiti be today? Given how bad the situation was before the earthquake and how bad the damage was, have we made good progress?

At the one year anniversary, I had strongly mixed feelings. On one hand, I was disappointed at the lack of progress. The camp populations seemed enormous. Although the rubble had been cleared from the roads, the wounds seemed very fresh. I wished that we had made greater progress. At the same time, I couldn’t image having worked harder or pushed my team any harder. I found the same reaction when I talked with others working to rebuild Haiti. We wished that we could have done more, but had no idea how we could have gone any faster.

At the second anniversary, I feel far better about the progress. The rubble is gone from most public spaces. The government’s program to empty six camps into sixteen neighborhoods (“6/16”) has emptied the camps that used to occupy Place St Pierre and Place Boyer—two of the most visible camps. As I drive around Port-au-Prince, life seems to be much more normal.

One of the challenges is that change comes slowly. After the earthquake, we all hoped that Haiti could be quickly rebuilt and rebuilt better. We dreamed of modernizing Port-au-Prince to have wider streets, of building modern building, of making Port-au-Prince into a livable city. Two years later, we are still dreaming of this. In Delmas, we are working with an urban planner who has drawn pictures of townhouses on palm tree lined streets. Maybe someday we will get there. However, we have to first finish repairing the existing buildings, clear out the collapsed buildings, and start repairing the streets.

When I left Haiti in May 2010, I did not intend to return. I was proud of what I had accomplished and wanted to try something new. I also feared that if I stayed in Haiti, that Haiti would break my heart. I stayed and it did. But I am glad that I stayed. Brick by brick, micro-entrepreneur by micro entrepreneur, we are helping to rebuild Haiti. It is a long slow fight, but I believe that we are moving in the right direction.

What do you think? Should we be proud of what we have accomplished or should we be embarrased that we have not done more?

Signs of Progress in Haiti

One of the greatest challenges in rebuiding Haiti is fighting the expectations. To some, the picture above is a picture of poverty. Women squatting in the street selling their meager wares surrounded by poor buildings. I fear that a lot of journalists would look at this image and see it as proof that Haiti is not being rebuilt.

But I know that this is a great victory. I wrote of my visits to this neigborhood last March. At that point, we had just started the rubble removal. I was thrilled to see how our work had transformed the neighborhood. And that is the challenge. If your starting reference is the scene below, the picture above is a beautiful success.

I am guilty of having written against the idea of just rebuilding the chaos.  Now I recognize that reconstruction has to go through steps. Just removing the rubble was a huge victory. Getting the unstable houses demolished and the damaged ones repaired was another huge victory. We have to help people rebuild their lives before we can help them to build a new neighborhood.

We are continuing to move forward. We are working with the local leaders and the mayor to build a better Delmas 32. Little by little, the bird will build its nest.

Video on House Repairs in Haiti

 

We just put together this video that explains what a green, yellow, and red tagged building is and what we mean by house repairs. Let me know what you think of it.