POOR HAITI. Any country hit by such a powerful earthquake so close to the surface would suffer loss of life, buildings and infrastructure. But on this occasion its size, combined with poor construction, the dire poverty and density of Haiti’s population and the lack of emergency capacity, make this a very grim picture indeed. Thousands of deaths and many more injured are expected. Yesterday’s display of international solidarity is heartening, but unless suitable emergency aid gets there by today many will perish who might have been saved.
The poorest country in the Western hemisphere is also the northern boundary between the Caribbean and North American tectonic plates where slabs of the Earth’s surface push past each other in a horizontal motion. Geologists had warned that another earthquake was highly likely, repeating a series of seven between 1612 and 1860, and that the dormancy since then was most unusual. In the meantime Haiti has had more than its share of other natural catastrophes, on top of the social and political ones which have made it a byword for under-development. In 2008 alone it was hit by four hurricanes or storms and widespread floodings made worse by deforestation caused by rural profiteering and poverty. A United Nations peacekeeping force of 11,000 troops is there to contain instability and conflicts arising from gross inequalities and corruption.
This international involvement will help mobilise the colossal aid required, but the sheer scale of the damage done to existing medical and communications facilities makes it difficult to organise immediately. Medicines, water, food and tents are needed. So is equipment to move collapsed concrete and other buildings. Thousands require treatment for lacerations, fractures, broken bones and damaged organs. Emergency electricity, lighting, communications and gas facilities must be set up to allow this work to be done. On top of that security forces fear outbreaks of looting, theft and civil disorder. It is a desperate picture, which is likely to make Haitians rely largely on their own meagre resources in coming days. They will then have to come to terms with a wrecked capital of Port-au-Prince and a countrywide devastation for which they are singularly ill-prepared.
Faced with such a catastrophe the rest of the world must organise its help for Haiti in a staged and organised fashion, taking account of longer-term as well as immediate needs. After the emergency relief operation a huge reconstruction effort will be required, but can it meet the standards needed for rebuilding in such a hazardous earthquake zone? Looking further ahead it will be essential to tackle the deeper causes of Haiti’s underdevelopment if it is to recover from this trauma.
Inescapably that means confronting the fact that 80 per cent of Haitians live on two dollars a day or less, and an estimated 50 per cent of them are unemployed or chronically under-employed. That poverty is at the root of this disaster, since it would not have been at all as serious otherwise. Natural and social disasters are inseparably linked together in our vulnerable world.