Haiti has suffered a very severe earthquake, a catastrophe the likes of which all humans should hope they will never personally experience themselves. The most recent death toll estimate I've heard from credible sources (upwards of 200,000) will place this earthquake in the ten worst earthquake disasters in all of human history. It's really bad.
I'm taking another Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (DMHA) class this semester, as part of my DMHA certificate. Our first assignment on hurricanes was hastily changed to a first assignment on Haiti's disaster, and so I've been reading up on it a lot this week. I've been reading up on it a lot this week with an eye toward understanding what makes this natural hazard event a "disaster." Several things stick out to me as particularly poignant and important on this topic.
Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere. Her infrastructure was not that advanced or strong to begin with, and it has sustained very severe damage. This is one of the major reasons the death toll continues to rise. Not all of the people who were buried in collapsed buildings had the mercy of dying immediately. Many of them died after days. I am heartbroken to say, I believe very many of them are continuing to die.
Machines that may have been able to aid in search and rescue were not able to make it into Port au Prince due to collapsed roads and roads blocked by fallen buildings. Instead, people were digging others free with their bare hands.
Search and rescue machinery, medical supplies, and food and water began arriving in Haiti with predictable, and honestly, somewhat remarkable speed-- within a day of the earthquake. However, the airport only has one runway. It was operational, but working below capacity for two major reasons. First, staff members were surviving (or had not survived) a major catastrophe. They were therefore not coming to work. Second, refueling became a major issue, meaning that planes could land and unload their supplies, but they could not take off again. This caused a major clog of the single runway so that other planes with more aid were not able to land.
Further, search and rescue machinery, medical supplies, and food and water were also arriving by boat. However, the crane at the port which unloads such heavy cargo had sustained heavy damage, and so while these supplies were there, in Haiti, in the harbor-- they could not get to land.
And then the roads were out.
I watched and read many news reports that discussed these things, and then I watched and read other news reports that talked about tensions building among survivors who were not receiving the aid they so desperately needed. The major problem in this (I should say the major MISTAKE in this) is that to me it seems not to have become part of disaster rescue/relief policy to inform people why exactly aid is not coming. The result was a city full of suffering people who don't have access to CNN thinking that the world has turned their collective backs on their tragedy.
Communication to the people about why aid has not arrived, some would argue, is far from top priority when there is no food or water and people are trapped under buildings. But I'm a social scientist. Let me tell you why this is important. When aid arrives, people will be glad to have food and water and medical supplies, finally. But they will hate the aid for having taken so long. They will hate the aid for all of the people they know and love who died because the aid did not arrive sooner. An already marginalized community (poorest nation in the Western hemisphere) is already primed to believe that those in power will abuse, misuse, and neglect their interests, because the people in power have already abused, misused, and neglected their interests. They will not trust the aid. They will believe it is all part of the standard line of trickery and deceit. They will believe the aid was purposefully withheld to create maximum casualties of unimportant people, or they will believe the aid was diverted to the wealthy, a standard practice of corruption. The extreme lack of trust in the midst of great suffering has a high potentiality to turn volatile.
On that subject, I watched as clips were shown of people running to pull water or food out of rubble. Several people reaching for the same item. Newscasters voiced over the clips that violence was beginning to break out. People on the ground were quoted as saying, "Oh, people will struggle or argue for maybe 30 seconds, and then it calms down again," and newscasters would repeat that violence was beginning to break out.
Stop it. Just stop it. People have a right to grab at water they find, and they have a right to argue with each other when they're hungry. If you're going to report that violence is breaking out after such a huge disaster, you'd damned well better back it up with footage of riots. Because violence. is. not. what. is. happening. in. Haiti. People are still digging up their loved ones. People are removing unidentified bodies from the city by the wheelbarrowful and truckload. People are searching for water and food and carrying others to makeshift tent hospitals for medical care which may or may not be enough to keep them alive. People are coping and are caring for each other, and if they yell at each other because they both want a cup of water... well, I've yelled at people for far less and in far less dire situations.
But we in the United States have this expectation that poor people, and especially poor black people will resort to violence for anything and everything. The expectation is that violence will happen, and so we look for that argument as proof that it has finally come. A nation born of slaves who have freed themselves, the poorest nation this hemisphere, we look for this to happen. It makes me swear at my computer screen, this racist, classist, sensationalist crap.
Ten worst earthquakes in human history-- you don't have to sensationalize it.
So these are the things that stick out to me about Haiti. These things and the ways in which people must survive. How people cannot trust even the buildings that remain standing because there have been so many secondary collapses, and so everyone-- EVERYONE-- in the city has become homeless, sleeping outside in the relative safety. Piles of bodies blocking roads, and people who are certain in their hearts that they are alone and forsaken. People who will never know what happened to their loved ones, if they were lucky enough to die quickly, if they were placed into a mass grave, and if so, which one.
Oh, and Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, I have two words for you.
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