Three and a half weeks may have passed, but the situation on the ground is still much the same as what is shown in this photo series. The major differences are that the search and rescue operations have come to a close. The field hospital at MINUSTAH logbase where much triage of earthquake victims was occurring has also closed. The type of medical personnel needed on the ground has shifted. Initially surgeons, especially orthopedic surgeons, were in high demand to deal with trauma, fractures and amputations. Now many of these patients require post-operative care. The 1000+ amputees will require intense physical therapy. An untold number will need grief counseling. Many doctors have answered the call, including my good friend Dr. Megan Coffee, who is manning the TB tent at the general hospital (see Haiti Hospital’s Fight Against TB Falls to One Man in NYTimes). Unfortunately, nurses who spend much more time delivering care to individual patients than doctors ever can are in short supply. As we move out of the early phase of the post-earthquake response, infectious diseases ranging from diarrheal diseases to tuberculosis are becoming a grave concern. Most of the remains of quake victims that are visible (i.e. not under rubble) have been cleared, burned or buried. Many will never find the bodies of their loved ones to give them a proper burial.
“Earthquakes don’t kill people,” says John Mutter, a seismologist and disaster expert at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “Bad buildings kill them.” And Haiti had some of the worst buildings in world. There are building codes, but in a country that has been ranked as the 10th most corrupt in the world, enforcement is lax at best. The concrete blocks used to construct buildings in the capital are often handmade, and are of wildly varying quality. “In Haiti a block is maybe an eighth of the weight of a concrete block that you’d buy in the U.S.,” says Peter Haas, the executive director of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), an NGO that has worked on buildings in Haiti. “You end up providing buildings quickly and cheaply but at great risk.”
Compared to the sensationalist reporting and scaremongering from other major news organizations, Amy Goodman and her team covered the situation on the ground with a great deal of sensitivity. I very much appreciate their balanced reporting as a counterpoint to dominant narrative being put forward at the time by CNN.
There are also significant problems with the quality of building materials used, says Peter Haas, head of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a US-based non-profit group that has been working in Haiti since 2006.
“People are skimping on cement to try to cut costs, putting a lot of water in, building too thin, and you end up with a structure that’s innately weaker,” said Mr Haas, who was on his way to Haiti to help assess the safety of damaged buildings.
“Concrete blocks are being made in people’s backyards and dried out in the sun,” he said.
Mr Haas said there were also “serious problems” with the enforcement of building codes in Haiti.
He said the government did not function at all in several parts of the country, and many communities lacked basic services such as electricity, sanitation services or access to clean water.
“So the problem of code enforcement is low down on the list,” he said.
At the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a small nonprofit organization in San Francisco, projects are also developed from the ground up by providing support to local entrepreneurs, said Peter Haas, its founder.
Mr. Haas spoke while traveling to Haiti, where, before the earthquake, his group had been set to announce a competition for local entrepreneurs to develop plans for infrastructure projects. The competition has been delayed, and the group has added a new category: earthquake-resistant housing.
In Haiti, Mr. Haas’s group has already been helping Coopen, a business cooperative in Cap Haitien that will collect organic waste and human waste from public toilets and convert it to biogas, a fuel, for cooking. And in Guatemala, the group has aided a small company, XelaTeco, that builds hydroelectric projects for rural villages.
“We’re really not trying to dump some new expert solution on the population,” Mr. Haas said. Working through local businesses, he said, ensures that ideas that do not work do not stay around. “If a business fails and the market doesn’t accept the product, it disappears,” he said.
In a telephone interview, Haas warned that victims of the earthquake are fanning out from the capital to smaller centers across the country, raising the potential for problems beyond Port-au-Prince. To avoid a long-term refugee crisis, he said, the central government and its international supporters must help not only victims in the capital but those who have fled elsewhere.
Haas estimated that several thousand people a day are arriving in Cap Haitien from the capital and are largely left to fend for themselves.
“I think the immediate concern is intake and tracking [the displaced] for support,’’ he said. “Then they can be moved to temporary shelters and more permanent residences.’’
He sees ways to combine the postquake relief work and the longer-term rebuilding. For example, he has been talking with a Virginia company called Shelter 2 Home that builds prefabricated shelters designed to serve as a refuge in a crisis and then be improved to become a permanent house.
Catherine Laine captured this scene among countless other similar while driving through Delmas 33, Port-au-Prince on January 16
Dear readers,
Here is a brief update on our activities in Haiti.
We have established an operations center in Cap-Haïtien with our partner SOIL to serve as a hub for coordinating volunteer efforts and supplies coming into the country, especially those coming in through the port of Cap-Haïtien and the Dominican Republic (one of the few open routes into Haiti these days). Our presence in the north, away from the destruction zone, has allowed our communication and logistic abilities to continue relatively intact, which has been extremely useful in coordinating efforts on the ground with other partners and aid groups.
As an immediate priority, we are recruiting and mobilizing teams of engineers and other technical experts to directly support relief efforts of key partners. As I write this, we are preparing to send our first teams of engineers into Haiti to support the medical response efforts of Partners in Health, an organization that, as we previously noted, is having a significant impact here. We are particularly interested at this moment in placing French or Creole speaking civil and structural engineers. If you are, or know, an engineer that might be interested in volunteering in Haiti, please send a resume or CV to helphaiti@aidg.org.
AIDG will also be helping to coordinate the distribution of a large number of cookstoves in affected areas. Even before this week’s disaster, AIDG was in discussions with several leading stove groups (including Prakti Design, WorldStove, and Trees Water People), and in fact had been planning to host these groups at a conference in Cap-Haïtien next week to strengthen our collaboration in Haiti. Our focus has obviously shifted in the past couple days, and the group is now mobilizing very quickly to bring in as many stoves as possible, while at the same time developing local manufacturing capacity.
Aside from these immediate response priorities, we are also already hard at work developing a longer term strategy for supporting reconstruction efforts in Haiti, including a collaboration with our friends Architecture for Humanity to promote the development of low cost earthquake resistant housing. More details on this will follow in the coming weeks.
As you can imagine, we have all available hands on deck right now to support the response in Haiti. But WE NEED YOUR HELP to make sure we have the resources to continue these efforts. These next weeks are critical for us and for Haiti, and we are asking you to make a donation, whatever you can, to support our work here. Every dollar helps, and every dollar will have an immediate and direct impact in the wake of this tragedy.
You can make a secure donation online here, or if you’d like to mail us a check, you can send it to the following address:
AIDG
P.O. Box 104
Weston, MA 02493
We can’t thank you enough for all of your support.
Quetsol is a new business that will provide high efficiency, low cost solar technologies that aim to increase access to basic illumination, electricity generation, and water pumping in Guatemala. Their mission is to help their clients save money and improve their quality of life through the use of appropriate technology.
At approximately 4:55 pm Eastern on Tuesday Port Au Prince experienced a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, with aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.7. There is widespread damage to infrastructure with numerous collapsed buildings. It is anticipated there will be a high casualty rate
The National Palace has collapsed (eyewitness photo)
The UN headquarters has been seriously damaged (source: UN)
The Hotel Montana has sustained collapse with 200 missing (source: associated press france)
A Hospital has collapsed (source:NYtimes)
We are currently developing opportunities for AIDG to aid in reconstruction with the help of partners. We will make another announcement on this shortly.
As you all know we are a small organization. We require some basic additional budget resources immediately to help run an assessment that will determine this longer term response aimed at infrastructure and reconstruction. If possible mail checks to:
AIDG
P.O. Box 104
Weston, MA 02493
We will actually receive these funds faster than online donations. We will be running a larger campaign in concert with our reconstruction announcement.
For those wishing to have an immediate direct impact on populations in Port Au Prince we are recommending supporting the medical response teams of Partners In Health. www.pih.org They are working with a field hospital set up by the UNDP that immediately needs pain meds, bandages and other medical supplies.
We ask you all to hold Haiti in your hearts and prayers as this tragedy unfolds.
Former Prime Minister Pierre-Louise at the IDB investor meeting in Port Au Prince earlier this month with Former President Bill Clinton, President Rene Preval and Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno. Photo by Peter Haas AIDG
Haiti’s Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis was dismissed by the Haitian senate in late night voting. President Rene Preval has nomminated Jean Max Bellerive, the country’s planning and co-operation minister, to be her replacement.
Quotes on the dismissal:
From the Miami Herald:
” Pierre-Louis, in office for a year, said she has spent much of her tenure getting international support for Haiti after four back-to-back storms devastated the country last year, and it is too soon to see the results of her work.
Senators were not swayed.
But unlike the last censure of a Haitian prime minister — Jacques-Edouard Alexis in April 2008 following days of food riots — this one wasn’t as swift or orderly.
At times, chaos reigned: Lawmakers screamed and talked over one another in front a national television audience.
The Senate president often rang a small silver bell in a futile attempt to create order as the session stretched into Friday morning without a vote. The vote finally occured at about 12:15 a.m., long after Pierre-Louis’ Senate supporters had left, believing they had succeeded in preventing a vote.
“There is an error in the summons and everyone knows it,'’ said Sen. Youri Latortue, a Pierre-Louis supporter who last year successfully led the movement to oust Alexis.
But those lined up against Pierre-Louis weren’t moved by the constitutional arguments, nor her letter to the Senate president questioning the validity of the censure and informing him that she did not plan to attend the session.”
From Al Jazeera:
“The move to fire Pierre Louis comes days after Bill Clinton, the UN’s special envoy to Haiti and a former US president, told an investor conference in Port-au-Prince that Haiti’s political risk was lower than it had been in his lifetime.”
Pete Haas just made an interesting post on starting a small international NGO over at the TED Fellows Blog. Here is a snipit:
Entrepreneurs or Idiots?
Don’t let the social overtake the enterprise.
“Fortunately if you are starting a new program abroad you don’t need to be an idiot like I was. Here are ten “rules” of starting an international service organization that would have helped me if I had known them a few years ago, and maybe can help you. To anybody running an organization they may seem obvious but it is amazing how many early stage entrepreneurs ignore them while focussed on the mission of trying to just get the school built, the pollution reduced, the farm running, etc. With these rules maybe you can start an enterprise that is as much enterprise as social.
Rule number 1: Don’t start a new organization
There are literally millions of established organizations globally that are in need of support. Before you start something new ask yourself: “What can I do to help something that is already here become more effective?” There are several programs I know of now that if I had learned about them earlier and applied to a management position it could have likely saved me a few years of getting my program running.
Rule number 2: Clearly define what you do and stick with it
So in the face of massive unmet need there is always the temptation to run the feeding-housing-water-sanitation-ecotourism-renewable energy-child education-dolphin saving program. But unless you are say putting up a millennium village presenting this type of program to funders can be a tough sell. To draw an example from my experience at AIDG donors may not see the clear link between a program in say ecotourism and a program in say light industrial fabrication. Don’t be a swiss army knife. Do one or two things well . . . ”
GuateVerde 09 Semifinalist Teams with Carol Chan and Waleska Aguilar
On September 19th, 2009 the six semi-finalists teams from AIDG’s business plan competition, GuateVerde, began the first of five workshops. These 6-hour sessions are designed to give the teams more insight into the business planning process and help them improve the hard skills needed in running their business. Regardless of whether a team goes on to the competition’s final phase, the participants will be equipped with the appropriate tools and proficiency necessary to present their business plans to prospective investors.
Each workshop includes lectures by local experts and interactive activities that get the teams sharing their knowledge and experience as well as networking with each other for future business opportunities.
A Speaker from Guatemala’s Superintendencia de Administración Tributaria.
After three workshops completed, it is clear that competition is fierce for GuateVerde 2009. That said, there is still a strong camaraderie among the entire group. When you find one team swapping business strategies with another, you know there is a solidarity being built that can be just as fruitful than any monetary award.
The Quetsol and SET Renova teams
Best of luck to all the teams as they prepare to present their business proposals in front of panel of judges October 24, 2009!
AIDG has received the tremendous honor of being invited to attend the Clinton Global Initiative Meeting this week (9/22-9/25) in New York as a commitment member.
The CGI Annual Meeting brings together a diverse group of the world’s most distinguished leaders from government, business, and civil society to examine today’s most pressing global challenges and transform that awareness into tangible action.
Peter Haas, our executive director, will be posting to our Twitter and blog throughout the week. Check back for the latest updates and posts as the conference progresses.
Despite the sweltering heat, AIDG Board Treasurer Will Decaneas is training hard for the Boston Half Marathon to take place this fall. Help him forget those shin splits and go those extra miles by sponsoring his efforts. He’s trying to raise $5000 for AIDG before the big day, Oct 11, 2009. And as if all this weren’t enough, he’s even matching the highest donation up to $500.
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