Haiti: 5 months post-quake, needs are still great

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June 29th, 2010
<!-- Post Title -->Haiti: 5 months post-quake, needs are still great

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Posted by: Melissa Waggenspack
Tags: citizenship

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The stories no longer dominate the newspaper headlines as they did in the weeks after the earthquake, but people in the devastated areas of Haiti continue to experience extreme difficulties.

Bill Lin, Director, Corporate Contributions, Johnson & Johnson recently traveled to L?og?ne, Haiti, a city located west of Port-au-Prince and at the epicenter of the January 12<SUP>th</SUP> earthquake. Among other activities, Bill was working with one of our nonprofit partners, CHF International, which is helping to provide housing for displaced families in L?og?ne. There, the United Nations estimates up to 90 percent of buildings were damaged in the earthquake. I asked Bill a few questions about his experience on the ground in Haiti:

It?s now been 5 months since the earthquake. What were your initial observations about the situation in Haiti?

While it looked like life had resumed on the streets, the trip was sobering for me. So many people are displaced and are still living in tent cities. The need for housing is so tremendous.

What are the some of the health concerns facing the people of Haiti?

Hurricane season began on June 1<SUP>st</SUP>, presenting a new threat to those who are still living in tent cities and other temporary housing. Not only are people unsafe in these living conditions but there is great concern over the spread of waterborne disease?especially with the threat of hurricanes. That is why, in Haiti, Johnson & Johnson is providing more assistance for housing than we have during previous disaster relief efforts.

What are some of the challenges in providing more permanent housing?

Part of the relief effort with our partner CHF is to provide prefabricated housing for those who have lost their homes. While several complicating factors hinder efforts to provide more permanent housing for residents, the small number of heavy machinery available for demolition slows down attempts to remove rubble and rebuild. But you can?t build a house or school until the debris is removed, and much of that work is being done by hand. Using only hand tools and wheelbarrows, a team of ten can take up to a week to raze and clear the rubble of what was once a two story house.



Since March, CHF has assembled cash-for-work teams and has also used some donated heavy machinery to remove more than 46,000 cubic meters of rubble from homes, schools, businesses, and other ruined buildings in L?og?ne.

What other programs is the company focusing on in Haiti?

In addition to providing assistance for housing, Johnson & Johnson is focusing on programs that restore health facilities especially in support of pregnant women and vulnerable children in Haiti, such as Save the Children and their work to create safe spaces for children who?ve been disconnected from their families.



You can learn more about our efforts in Haiti and the partners we work with on our corporate website. Please visit their websites to find out how you can help.

http://jnjbtw.com/2010/06/haiti-5-months-post-quake-needs-are-still-great/

 

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Re: Haiti: 5 months post-quake, needs are still great

Portlight continues its Haiti response

Hurricane season is here, and Haiti is not ready. Over 1.5 million Haitians are living outside in tents or under tarps, and are highly vulnerable to a hurricane. Portlight is working on constructing steel shelters out of shipping containers for homeless Haitians, as detailed in the Haitian Relief Recap blog post. Please visit the Portlight.org web site or the Portlight blog to learn more and to donate to Portlight's efforts in Haiti.

Figure 3. Still frame from the remarkable video taken inside the Haitian Presidential Palace during the 2010 earthquake.

To remind people of just how devastating the earthquake was, the Haitian government released a a href= video earlier this month showing the inside of the Haitian Presidential Palace during the mighty Haitian earthquake.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

 

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Re: Haiti: 5 months post-quake, needs are still great

I posted this article in an earlier thread in March, I still believe that it could be a great solution:

A Feasible Housing Solution for Haitians: Shipping Containers

Published March 03, 2010
by:Ray J. Johnso

A feasible solution for housing the earthquake survivors in Haiti would be acquiring the myriad of surplus shipping containers that have been retired, and sit idle in many ports. At first thought, some may consider this a demeaning manner in which to house people. However, my research has rendered facts that would strongly contradict those whom might think of this concept as demeaning or inadequate.

From my observations of the many photographs and newscasts that I've watched when the news of the earthquake first struck Haiti, I noticed that hundreds of these shipping containers remained stacked in the port of Haiti. I've discovered that they are constructed to be stacked and remain stacked. The high-seas the shipping vessels traverse, it is imperative that they stay in place.The shipping containers are impervious to wind and rain.

Hundreds of people are presently residing in shipping containers in Jakarta, they have for years. In fact, a community of people have lived in shipping containers for 20 years in Armenia. They were also struck with a devastating earthquake back in 1988. Some have never left this means of temporary housing due to the rigid construction of shipping containers.

Shipping container architecture is a widely growing "Going Green" trend in alternative habitats today. Shipping container living has no bounds. It reaches from here in the United States, all the way to the European Union. It should also be mentioned that some states in the US are not familiar with such structures and obtaining permits for building and zoning can be a daunting task, sometimes pursuing such results in dead-ends.

"While a number of resourceful people have converted shipping containers to makeshift shelters at the margin of society for years,architects and green designers are also increasingly turning to the strong, cheap boxes as source building blocks. Shipping containers can be readily modified with a range of creature comforts, and can be connected and stacked to create modular, efficient spaces for a fraction of the cost, labor and resources of more conventional materials" as stated on Tech News Update on-line.

Applied in Haiti you have sustainable housing for Haitians, and the thousands of workers that are descending on the country of Haiti for relief, support and construction for the rebuilding process.

Shipping container manufacturing has two key-components in mind during the construction of such an enclosure; strength and durability. They are impervious to wind, rain and seawater, for they travel on open decks of large shipping vessels across the vast oceans around the world.

The come in four sizes, the most common being the forty-foot and the twenty-foot shipping containers. Forty-foot shipping containers weigh 8000 lbs, and can be stacked 12 high when empty. Forty-foot shipping containers exact measurements are 40' feet long, by 8' wide and are 8' 6" in height. Twenty-foot shipping containers are the exact same measurements, for the exception of length (weight 5050 lbs).

The above-mentioned measurements make for ease of mobility and uniformity due to the modular element properties they hold. Dorm like, or "pod" like housing village could be set-up in a steadfast pace. The port in Haiti would have a multitude of shipping containers on hand and can be transported by sea faring vessel, semi and or flat bed truck.

These shipping containers are in such abundance that they could be donated by shipping magnets and the thousands of companies that rely on these shipping containers to commence global commerce.

Source: Wikipedia.com
Tech News Update.com

http://www.associatedcontent.com/ar...ble_housing_solution_for_haitians.html?cat=47

 

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Re: Haiti: 5 months post-quake, needs are still great

Still homeless from Haiti earthquake, thousands fight forced evictions

Six months on, the government has yet to secure adequate shelter for many of the 2.1 million people made homeless by the Haiti earthquake. Some landowners are now trying to evict the refugee camps.


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Earthquake-displaced people wait in line to receive supplies at the Canahan 2 camp, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, June 30. Some landowners are trying to evict displaced people from Haiti earthquake refugee camps.
Alexandre Meneghini/AP Photo

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By Alice Speri, Contributor / July 2, 2010
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Tens of thousands of Haitians risk becoming homeless for a second time, as weary landowners clear their properties of makeshift refugee camps in order to build new homes or sell their land on Haiti's booming real-estate market.

Of 1,241 refugee camps here, only 206 are officially recognized, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Only the official camps are monitored by NGOs, meaning that the majority lack protection.

"Nobody is really watching,? says Deepa Pachang, a volunteer with International Action Ties, a nonprofit organization monitoring illegal evictions. ?Sometimes authorities show up at a camp and all the people are already gone.?


This past spring, the government Commission of Damage Assessment, Temporary Shelter, Demolition and Reconstruction reportedly identified several sites totaling 6 million square meters (some 1,500 acres) for relocating people to the perimeters of the capital. Lengthy negotiations to secure the land have yet to secure relocation options for the 2.1 million people left homeless from the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Now, forced evictions from refugee camps are on the rise, officials say. With landowners exasperated by the slow pace, some are taking matters into their own hands.

Landowners want property back

Ralph Stevens Stephen, godson of the landowner of a property in the Delmas 60 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, which has been used as an unofficial refugee camp since January, recently visited the camp with 10 armed men in police uniforms to coerce the 178 homeless people here to leave.

?This is private land, these people have to take off,? Mr. Stephen says. He says he has been telling residents to leave since April, and he is convinced that most squatters would go home if they weren't trying to get compensation from the government. ?The government doesn?t owe anything to these people,? he says.

Resident Oxeana Ismael remembers the day that the armed men showed up ? with no official identification and driving unmarked cars ? and threatened to return with tear gas if the homeless did not leave within 15 days. That was in early June.

?They asked me if I live here, and told me that I have to take down my tent and go,? says the middle-aged woman, who since January has shared a makeshift shelter here with five relatives, including her mentally disabled brother. She and several other residents say the men pointed their weapons at those present and asked for their names.

Subsequently, Haiti?s Ministry of Justice and Public Security issued a report that said a number of the Delmas camp residents ?declared they were ready to leave the property by June 22," according to a copy obtained by the Monitor.

Many buildings still not safe

But residents say they never volunteered to leave, as they have nowhere to go. The camp committee says only 14 of the camps? 44 families were homeowners before the earthquake, and all their houses were either damaged or destroyed. Of the 188,383 destroyed or damaged homes, only 66,967 have been assessed for safety so far, according to OCHA. Of these, 42 percent have been deemed safe for reoccupation, but only half of those have actually been reoccupied, mainly because people no longer have money to rent.

As episodes of violent eviction have been reported at some refugee camps, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN's monitor on housing issues, has played mediator between landowners and camp residents.

?If we are aware of one, we try to reach a compromise with the owners,? says IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle, citing one successful case.
Mr. Doyle says he is currently aware of about 30 camps that have been forcibly evicted or are at risk of imminent eviction, though he says details are sketchy.

?We haven?t heard of violence, but we did hear of armed groups entering camps,? he says. ?I can?t say how that?s related to evictions, but I can make an educated guess.?

Haitian National Police spokesman Franz Koloeur says he has not heard of a violent expulsion in a ?long? time and that most cases of threats and complaints are reported as simple ?arguments? and dealt with by local police precincts. He says all expulsions must be first authorized by a court, although even a three-week government moratorium on forced evictions in April did little, if anything, to slow the problem.

?People can?t make their own justice, people can?t expel other people themselves," he says. "If an owner uses weapons or threats, they will have problems with the police themselves.?
Haiti's Ministry of Interior declined to comment.

'We have no homes'

At the refugee camp in the Delmas 60 neighborhood, 10 families have already left due to intimidation, but most residents don?t know where to go.

?They told us to go back to our homes, but we have no homes,? says Jireau Museau, a member of the camp committee, who lost his house and grocery store in the earthquake. He and other residents must use toilets in a nearby settlement because nearby homeowners prevented NGOs from building latrines on the property. ?If we had another place to go, we would have left already,? he says.

As of Friday, camp residents were still on the property, but many say this won?t last long. The property owner threatened to evict them this week.
Standing by her tent as the daily rain started, Ms. Ismael says she is just waiting.

?If they come back," she says, "I?ll just move right out of the camp and stay on the road."

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Amer...i-earthquake-thousands-fight-forced-evictions

 

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Re: Haiti: 5 months post-quake, needs are still great

<!-- /thePhoto potdFrame -->Relocating in Haiti

An aerial view of camps set up by earthquake survivors is seen in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 12.


St. Feliz evens/Reuters


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<!-- /thePhoto potdFrame -->Relocating in Haiti

Residents at the Petionville Golf Club carry their belongings as they prepare to relocate to Corail, Haiti, on April 14.


Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

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Earthquake survivors slip as they walk along a mud-covered path at the Petionville Golf Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on April 12.


Eduardi Munoz/Reuters

<!-- /thePhoto potdFrame -->Relocating in Haiti

People are reflected in water at a homeless earthquake camp after heavy rains in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in March. After the Jan. 12 earthquake, millions of displaced people have been living in makeshift camps. Haiti began an operation on Saturday to begin relocating people in camps that may be at risk for mudslides and flooding during the nation's upcoming rainy season.

Ramon Espinosa/AP




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