Tag Archives: emergency

Carmen Charles and her family survived the earthquake and are now receiving help from Caritas. Credit Conor O'Loughlin/Caritas 2010

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By Conor O’Loughlin, Trócaire (Caritas Ireland) in Port-au-Prince

The camp is chaos. What little grass remains has been tramped down by the tens of thousands of homeless, most of it churned by now churned to dust and floating around the stifling air.

Two weeks ago this camp was a golf course, one of the few escapes of Haiti’s well-to-do. A lot has changed in two weeks.

50,000 people live here during the day now, and by night as many as 100,000 crowd together in huts made of ripped curtains and plastic sacks. There are few facilities. The noise is deafening – the public volume of every day living but mixed in are the occasional sobs of the injured or the alone, the hyperactive squawking of stray dogs or the constant fly over of helicopters delivering aid to another desperate part of this stricken city.
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A sample food kit at the CRS/Caritas Haiti warehouse destined for Haitian families. All of these goods were donated by churches and communities across the border in the Dominican Republic. Conor O'Loughlin Caritas/2010

With the airport in Port-au-Prince still not fully functional, most aid workers are getting to Haiti via the Dominican Republic. The road across the island of Hispaniola forms a line between two very different capitals: Santo Domingo with its Caribbean charm and laid-back atmosphere at one end and impoverished, stricken Port-au-Prince at the other.

The drive takes between five and eight hours, depending on traffic, and the route is lined with aid convoys bringing food and water, tents and medical supplies to the three million Haitians affected by the earthquake of January 12.

The border is chaotic. Leaving behind the genial bustle and brightly-painted houses of the Dominican Republic, the gate that marks the divide separates what could be thought of as heaven and hell.

Immediately you know you’re in a different country. The tar road gives way to rough gravel and the gay villages become sad, earth-coloured settlements that give off a thick air of poverty, even from a distance.

The people on this side smile less, too, but then they have less reason to.

It is well documented at this stage that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with two-thirds of people living off less than $2 a day. The Dominican Republic is hardly rich, but with an average GDP of around eight times that of Haiti, people here are a little further up the ladder of development.
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A volunteer fills cans with lentils as part of the food aid to 50,000 displaced Haitians living on the Petionville golf course Photo by Lane Hartill/Catholic Relief Services 2010.

By Lane Hartill, CRS Communications Officer, Port-au-Prince.  CRS is a Caritas member in the USA.

A lot of people around the world are asking the same question about Haiti: What’s taking so long for food to get out.

Spend a morning at the Petionville golf course, and you’ll have your answer.

The once-swanky country club in Port-au-Prince is now home to some 50,000 displaced Haitians. The camp is already taking on the trappings of a community. In one section of the camp, you can charge your cell phone, call Europe at a phone kiosk, buy vegetables, and get your haircut.

Cardboard street signs are even popping up on some trash-strewn paths. The place is so packed you have to turn sideways to get to some tents.

Behind the flowered bed sheets that serve as walls, you see shadows moving, hear babies crying and smell the akra sizzling in oil, the flat cakes made of flour and spices that Haitians love. The sun feels like it’s closer here, and most people lay in the shade, fanning themselves, trying to figure out how to make it through another day.

Most people keep their eyes averted from one of the hills at the camp. That’s where some Haitians bathe in their underpants, hiding behind some scrawny trees that offer only a suggestion of privacy.
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Seventy percent of St. Francois de Sales hospital collapsed in the aftermath of the quake that ravaged the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The hospital was about to close but with the help of CRS and Caritas Haiti the hospital now has three working operating rooms. "We figured if people survived the apocalypse of the earthquake," says CRS senior program director, Dr. Jude Banatte, "then they should not die because of lack of care, and that's what we are doing here, giving them the best care possible." Credit: Sara A. Fajardo/Catholic Relief Services.

By Lane Hartill, CRS Communications Officer, Port-au-Prince.  CRS is a Caritas member in the USA.

A lot of the stuff I saw at the hospital, I can’t tell you about. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you cover your kids’ eyes. I wanted to cover mine.

What I can tell you about is St. Francois de Sales, the CRS/Caritas-supported hospital that was almost destroyed in the earthquake but is now once again taking care of people. The Haitians there will break your heart.

Like Sara. A 6-year-old with what seems to be a left leg broken in multiple places. The quake buckled her house and she was trapped under it for a few hours. She was finally pulled out and now she’s here. Laying in a white undershirt and a diaper fashioned out of bandages. Her mom, wearing a red beret, sits next to her and spoons rice and beans into Sara’s mouth from a Styrofoam container. Neither of them smile.

Many of the people at the hospital were trapped in rubble and have the ghastly injuries to prove it.

Some were trapped for a few minutes, others for a few hours. Most of them sat on the floor in the heat and stink of various hospitals around the city.
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Caritas food distribution arrives at an encampment of earthquake victims near Sacre Coeur in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Katie Orlinsky/ Caritas 2010

By Conor O’Loughlin, Communications Officer, Trócaire (Caritas Ireland)

Haitians are a religious people. 80% are Catholic, and while it is known that some still practice a form of voodoo that dates back to the population’s ancestry in West Africa, the faith of the majority is reflected in the streets. Churches seem as common as trees and modified trucks that serve as taxis ply the streets painted in garish lettering with slogans like ‘God is with us’, ‘Jesus Loves You’ and ‘Pray to Mother Mary’.

In Haiti, God really is everywhere. In the nights since the earthquake, the streets swell with the music of hymns. People of all ages gathering together, many still afraid to go indoors, offering up thanks for their survival but remembering to put in a request for speedy recovery, too.

Caritas Haiti, the development and humanitarian wing of the Catholic Church here, has a simple office in the centre of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. The Caritas logo, a simple cross with beams of light radiating from its centre, is worked into the ironwork of the building. Instead of glass windows, vertical slats move tepid air through the rooms. Its carpark has no space for cars; instead, crowded together in tents of every colour, live aid workers from around the world, representing various Caritas organisations, in Haiti to help.

Run by Fr Chadic, Caritas Haiti already had its work cut out in trying to improve the lot of Haitians. Even before the earthquake, two-thirds of people here lived on less than $2 a day, and more than half of those lived on $1 a day.

That level of extreme poverty, the worst in the Western Hemisphere, meant that Haitians were not only affected much worse by the earthquake, but it will be much harder for them to recover.

If you live on $2 a day, how do you afford to rebuild your house? Or how do you replenish the tiny supply of plantain and tomates you sold from your doorway to scrape together an income?
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The funeral for the Archbishop outside the Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Katie Orlinsky/ Caritas 2010

More than a thousand people gathered in front of the ruins of Port-au-Prince’s cathedral Saturday for the funerals of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot and Vicar General Mons. Charles Benoit.

The Archbishop of Port-au-Prince and the Vicar General had been killed in the cathedral after it collapsed during a powerful earthquake on 12 January that has left 150,00 dead in the Haitian capital alone.

Many of the crowd were homeless or would have lost relatives in the earthquake. Many were bandaged, dressed in the best clothes they could salvage.

Auxiliary Archbishop Joseph Lafontant told the crowd, “A lot of Haitians are asking, ‘Why did this happen?’ Many are even asking, ‘Why would God cause this?’ God wants to unite the people. It is a way to build a new Haiti.

“For anyone who has turned away from God, now is the time to return.”

Archbishop Lafontant praised the life and work of Archbishop Miot as a vocal powerful champion for the poor and disaffected.

Archbishop Miot, 63, became Archbishop of Port-au-Prince in 2008. He was ordained a priest in 1975 and was consecrated a bishop in 1997. He was a member of the Saint Jacques order of missionary priests, founded in 1951 by the bishop of Gonaives, Haiti.

“In our prayer, we recall that Jesus, too, wept before the tomb of one whom he loved,” said Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, a concelebrant at the funeral Mass, reading a message from Chicago Cardinal Francis E. George.

Archbishop Dolan is the chairman of the board of Catholic Relief Services, a Caritas member in the USA.

Bishop Pierre Dumas, President of Caritas Haiti, said, “He was a very simple man who didn’t take anything for himself.

“His attention for the poor was almost obsessive. He used to go to Bel-air, one of the poorest districts to help people. He was affectionate but he always said what he thought and defended his opinions to the end. He was a man of prayer, but in a simple way.”

Ronal Labauche received clean water from Caritas. Water mains have been damaged, so getting water to Haiti's quake survivors is vital to stop the spread of disease. Credit: Michelle Hough/Caritas 2010

By Michelle Hough

Ronel Labauche was a high school teacher before the earthquake struck, but now he’s unemployed because his school was severely damaged. He used to live in a house but he now sleeps on plastic sheeting in a camp in Port-au-Prince along with his wife and children.

“My kids are bright. I used to pay US$200 for their school, but now it’s no longer standing,” says Mr Labauche.

Caritas has come to the camp to install a “water bladder” so people will have drinking water.

Apart from providing food, shelter and medical help, Caritas’s relief effort is also focused on ensuring people have drinkable water. This may be done by giving people bottles of water, providing them with purification tablets so they can treat water supplies – or, as they are doing in Mr Laubauche’s camp – by installing water bladders.

“This water is the only thing that has reached us so far,” says Mr Labauche.

The massive international relief effort which aims to help around three million people affected by the earthquake had difficulties getting off the ground. In the days following the earthquake supplies couldn’t come in through Port-au-Prince airport and the port was damaged too. Cracked and blocked roads means logistical difficulties have continued. Also, the sheer number of people requiring food, water, shelter and medical attention is overwhelming.

Without a clean water supply people are prone to dehydration and stomach bugs.

Mr Labauche and his family will now have regular access to water as the bladder holds 15,000 litres of water and is refilled daily. It is enough to cater for 1000 people per day.

But the problems faced by Mr Labauche and his family are much greater.

“All of us affected by the earthquake have to live on what we can find. Prices have gone up because of scarcity,” he says. “Some people really have nothing because they lost their house and everything in it.

For Mr Labauche and the other people in the camp, providing them with water is the first step in taking care of their needs, but there’s still a long way to go.