What happens after the relief services pack up and the foreign volunteers go home? Today’s article in the New York Times by Neil MacFarquhar writing from Gonaïves is an all-too-rare example of follow-up during the off-season of catastrophe. Half a year after a succession of hurricanes left hundreds of people dead and Haiti’s desperately fragile infrastructure in tatters, the people of Gonaïves are still struggling to resume normalcy — two-thirds of the city have yet to be repaired — even as they fearfully muster their defenses against future storms.
No other city in Haiti absorbed so much punishment. More than 30 inches of rain fell overnight. The deforested hills, less than 2 percent of them covered by trees, sent the spill-off crashing down into La Quinte River, the wall of water and mud eventually cresting at 15 feet above its banks.
By the time it receded from the city streets, the flood had killed 466 inhabitants; another 235 just disappeared and are presumed dead. Of the city’s 33,000 buildings, 5,441 collapsed and some 22,300 others were damaged. Nationally, damages came to a total of $900 million, or nearly 15 percent of the gross domestic product.
“All it takes is one cloud, and everyone asks me when they will be evacuated,” groused the deputy mayor, Jean-François Adolphe, when asked about the mood here. The City Council tried to develop a plan, he said, but readily admitted it was basically fruitless. The city does not have a place to shelter anyone, not to mention the means to ferry its inhabitants to higher ground.
Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and former US President Bill Clinton visited Haiti to meet with President Rene Preval to discuss Haiti’s predicament and the poverty trap affecting its people. As has been clear for many years, any serious plans for the country’s recovery will have to address not only provision of basic services and securing food supplies, but also long-term job creation and environmental recovery efforts. Another certainty is that such efforts will require thorough changes in North America’s relationship to Haiti in terms of support and funding; although the UN released a request for $108 million for hurricane recovery in Haiti, less than half of that has been raised. A high-level donor conference will take place in Washington, DC, later this spring.
More on the hurricanes, Haiti’s future, and a putative new chapter in US-Haiti relations:
UNICEF: Surveying storm preparedness in Gonaives.
Paul Farmer and Brian Concannon: “Change Haiti Can Believe In”
US Conference of Catholic Bishops: Cardinal Francis George urges Obama to grant Temporary Protected Status to Haiti for the next 18 months.