Category Archives: Haiti

by | January 11, 2013 · 11:25 am

Haiti: three years on

haiti-earthquake-damageBy Pascale Palmer. Originally published in the Catholic Herald.

Three years ago on January 12 a catastrophic earthquake shook the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, devastating Haiti.

Within minutes thousands of poorly-made homes and buildings collapsed. Nearly a quarter of a million children, women and men died. At least one million people were made homeless. Amongst the dead was the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, most of the leadership of the UN programme, and nearly a third of the country’s civil servants.

Video, photos and more information about CAFOD’s response to the earthquake>>

In the aftermath of the earthquake, aid agencies from around the world mobilised, while the US government deployed large numbers of troops to support food distribution and security. Trying to haul machinery, building materials, toilets or water through a country whose roads had been destroyed or needed to be cleared of rubble, was a huge undertaking.

Three years on, all the rubble in the capital Port-au-Prince has been cleared from the streets, and the worst-hit buildings demolished. The majority of people have been moved from camps into transitional or permanent homes, and the capital is busy with life and activity. Some of the public parks, previously used as camps, have now been cleaned and tended, and returned to former glory.

To suggest times have been hard for Haitians since 2010 is an insult to what people have had to suffer. Continue reading →

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Video

Dispatch from Haiti: three years after the earthquake

Mike Noyes, our Head of Humanitarian Programmes for Asia and Latin America, talks from Haiti about the progress made since the earthquake.

Read more about our response>>

Pray for the people of Haiti>>

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by | January 7, 2013 · 3:18 pm
by | October 26, 2012 · 7:59 am

Fifty years of responding to emergencies: Haiti, 2010

In his final blog about how we’ve responded to emergencies over the last 50 years, Mike Noyes, our Head of Humanitarian Programmes for Asia and Latin America, remembers the Haiti earthquake.

On 12 January 2010, just after 4pm in the afternoon, Haiti was hit by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, centred not far from its crowded capital, Port-au-Prince.  Almost a quarter of a million people were killed, including about a third of the country’s civil servants, most of the leadership of the UN programme in the country and the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince.

Around three million people were affected by the impact of the earthquake and at least one million people were made homeless.  The massive destruction of buildings and roads was a major handicap to initial relief efforts, which saw not just the mobilisation of aid agencies from all around the world but the short term deployment of large numbers of US troops.

The Catholic community of England and Wales responded with massive generosity to our appeal, and we began working with both Haitian and international partners, including Catholic Relief Services.  In the first six months, we deployed seven staff members on long or short term secondments to help the Caritas response and, amongst other things, we supported the provision of water and sanitation services for 40,000 displaced people.

In the two and a half years since the earthquake, we have continued to provide major support in the water and sanitation sector, building latrines to accompany new homes as people move out of camps, rebuilding cholera units in hospitals, and teaching children in schools about the importance of good sanitation.

The Haiti earthquake was the first major emergency I was involved with after joining CAFOD. Continue reading →

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by | January 11, 2012 · 3:55 pm

Haiti: applaud the successes

Sarah Marsh is our Programme Officer for Haiti.

Haiti two years on: our response>>

“Rubble still lines the street of Port au Prince”, “people are still living in tents”, “millions of dollars of aid funding are still unspent”, “the response is too slow” – all tag lines that we have become used to hearing since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It’s time for the commentators to take a step back and break it down to the bones of what really happened.

Disaster – check.

Crisis – check.

Emergency – check.

Disease – check.

Political failure  – check.

Civil unrest – check.

Death – check.

Not many countries in the world have been hit as badly as Haiti in the past two years. The country has had multiple emergencies in less than 24 months. Not only has it endured its worst disaster since Independence, it is struggling with the immense task of controlling the now-endemic outbreak of cholera across a country that has little or no sanitation, along with devastating storms and outbreaks of violence and civil unrest.

Continue reading →

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by | January 10, 2012 · 2:14 pm

Haiti: getting to the top of the hill

A taptap in Port-au-Prince

Catherine Cowley, who has been working as a trainee in our Humanitarian team since April 2011, shares her impressions of Haiti.

Haiti earthquake two years on: our response>>

As someone who had never been to Haiti, and freshly arrived from CAFOD’s London offices, the first thing that hit me when I exited the airport in Port-au-Prince wasn’t the crowd of drivers rushing up to grab the attention of the new batch of arrivals, or the heat and dust that are a complete contrast to the dreary November weather in London. It was the brightly coloured pickups, called tap-taps, which trawl up and down the roads looking for passengers.

They are a bit of a shock to the system because they are brightly painted, constantly hum with music, are always crowded, and seem to have a never-ending ability to just keep going, despite all the obvious repairs they have gone through. Anyone looking at a stationary tap-tap would have a hard time imagining them slogging up one of the many bumpy Port-au-Prince roads. And yet they do. And this pretty much reflects what it’s like in Haiti.

Continue reading →

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