It is impossible to imagine what we will find ahead…”
- Coco McCabe blogging from Haiti, January 19, 2010
Oxfam’s Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues who traveled Haiti to help with the relief effort, joining 200 Oxfam staff already on the ground.
You can read about McCabe's daily experiences on our Oxfam America blog, including photos, interviews, and a firsthand look at the challenges people are facing in in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake.
Keep up with McCabe’s latest blogs here.
]]>
In this short interview from January 19, Oxfam Quebec’s Yves Gattereau talks with Coco McCabe about the threat of food shortages in Haiti’s rural areas. Reports indicate that thousands of urban earthquake survivors from Port-au-Prince have fled to already poor rural communities. "We’re going to see how much food … we can provide to them ahead of time," says Gattereau, “so we won’t have to intervene in another crisis in the countryside."
Source: CIA – the World Factbook
]]>" All people who are professionals in our area, in our organizations…the country has lost a group of key people that could help for development and of course thousands of children, women, men…but mainly women and children are the worst affected. Our people are now sleeping in the street. The government, even people from the international community in Haiti and of course poor people, we are all living outdoors in the streets.
“We are not just talking about the disaster affecting the country’s institutions…it affects the government, civil society and the international community.
"Our coordination with the international community is still working. Our concern now is not the size of aid coming to Haiti, it’s how to get adequate people and resources to manage it. How to get the aid in place and to manage it. It needs to be done quickly.
“My colleague [incoming country director, Claude St Pierre] was coming to Haiti to replace me and we were trying to ensure a smooth transition. He had just arrived in Haiti that afternoon and came to our office to say hello and to be introduced to staff. Unfortunately, we were in the door of my office saying hello when the earthquake started. We stayed hugging each other for that entire minute. Of course, since I have worked in emergencies, I understood it was an earthquake, but I have never experienced an earthquake of this magnitude.”
]]>It had been like this for the last three days, ever since Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, was hit by a devastating earthquake, said my colleague. Whether the inhabitants of the house, surrounded by collapsed buildings and debris, would ever come back was quite another question.
It's estimated that two million people were affected by the massive earthquake that hit the Haitian capital earlier this week. Thousands are thought to have been killed, many were injured and the rest of the city's dazed residents are still reeling from the shock of it all.
Many walk the streets, some barefoot, balancing on their heads bags containing what belongings they could grab before they fled and clutching plastic containers for water. Large numbers are also wearing masks to stop inhaling the thick grey smoke that lingered long after the quake. The masks also offered some protection from the thick stench of dead bodies that lined the streets in the immediate aftermath of the quake and are still turning up wrapped in sheets or pieces of clothing.
It's feared that as many as 100,000 may have been killed in the earthquake while others are still trapped under the debris of collapsed buildings.
Some foreign search and rescue crews who had been working to recover those trapped under wrecked buildings at what was the capital's top hotel, the Montana, told me that cries could still be heard from those buried beneath the rubble across the capital.
Some aid is now getting through to the city. Much of it is coming by truck from the neighboring Dominican Republic. Some supplies have started to be flown in via the capital's airport which was affected by the quake and has reopened for humanitarian flights after several days of closure
The aid agency Oxfam is flying in emergency experts and is starting to distribute water at some of the large makeshift camps that have sprung up at parks and outdoor areas and hospitals.
The needs are enormous as most basic services just aren't functioning. At the best of times, daily life in Haiti for the 80 percent or so of the population who have to live on less than two dollars a day, is a daily struggle.
The impact of the quake has made things even worse.
Haiti needs more than a quick fix of emergency aid. It will be many years before the country can really get back on its feet again and fully recover from this massive shock.
]]>Water
During earthquakes, like the one that rocked the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, water systems, with their extensive network of pipes and pumps, often collapse. Repairs can take time—time that people who depend on that water to stay alive don’t have.
Without water, people can’t last much beyond three days. That’s why Oxfam focuses much of its emergency response on rushing to provide survivors with a safe supply.
With years of experience responding to emergencies around the world, Oxfam’s water engineers know how to build temporary systems with speed and efficiency so that people can get the water they need. Oxfam trucks water into remote regions, drills for it through desert floors regions, erects massive storage tanks, hauls in generators, repairs pumps, lays temporary water lines, and hands out plastic buckets so people can tote water back to their homes.
And there’s an internationally accepted standard of delivery Oxfam strives to maintain in every crisis. It calls for providing survivors with about four gallons of water per person per day—an amount intended to cover just essential needs.
Here are some of the critical components of an effective emergency water system:
Sanitation
Ensuring that disaster survivors living in camp conditions have safe ways to dispose of waste is crucial to helping them live in a healthy and dignified environment, so creating latrines is a key element of Oxfam’s humanitarian programming.
As quickly as possible after an emergency, we begin constructing simple latrines consisting of holes or trenches in the ground surrounded by light structures of poles and plastic sheeting to provide privacy. As soon as we have the time and resources to do it, we add concrete slabs to stand on to make the latrines cleaner and easier to use.
Oxfam also builds bathing facilities that are designed to be safe and private.
Oxfam makes sure that the displaced communities themselves are involved in the construction and maintenance of their sanitation structures, and in order to help ensure that women and girls feel safe using these communal facilities, we take care that women in particular are involved in decision-making about their location, design, and construction.
]]>Whenever an earthquake or hurricane hits, it is the poorest people who face the greatest risks. They often have no choice but to live in substandard housing that is not built to withstand the intensity of a high-magnitude quake or flood. This means poor and marginalized people are often more vulnerable to injury and death. To make matters worse, often those who do survive have the fewest material resources to recover from disasters. While earthquakes and hurricanes cannot be prevented, the fact that poor communities are disproportionately affected is not a natural condition. It is a human-made problem that results from cultural, socio-economic, political, and institutional factors.
Haiti has a painful history of political instability and humanitarian disasters. The country is still recovering from four serious storms that hit within a few weeks of each other in 2008. Hurricanes and earthquakes exacerbate extreme poverty: they damage neglected infrastructure like roads and drinking water systems, and further degrade the environment. The effects of the January 2010 earthquake will be felt long after the initial recovery period. Survivors—making do with limited resources—face years of hard work to recover. However, disaster losses in the short and long term can be substantially reduced by taking measures to decrease peoples’ vulnerability and build their resilience in the face of hazardous events, whether it is improving immediate living conditions or addressing all the underlying causes of poverty that contribute to increased suffering at the time of emergencies.
Oxfam has been working in Haiti to create sustainable means of earning a living, help Haitians reduce their vulnerability to disasters, and strengthen and support people’s ability to hold their government accountable. These long-term efforts meant that, when the earthquake hit, we already had staff on the ground ready to work with local organizations to respond to the humanitarian crisis.
No country can fully withstand the impact of an earthquake like the one that has rocked Haiti, especially a nation saddled with deep poverty and minimal infrastructure. We know that the communities we work with are strong and determined and will respond to this disaster as they have others. We have a shared responsibility to ensure that Haitians have the resources they need to avoid unnecessary suffering, both now and in the long run.
Help now by donating to our Haiti Earthquake Response Fund.
]]>