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Haiti: Aid Pours in as the Tragedy Unfolds

2 years ago
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David Wood
David Wood
Chief Military Correspondent
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With an impressive swiftness, the U.S. disaster relief apparatus has sprung into action. Within hours of the earthquake Tuesday that devastated the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, President Obama had addressed the nation, the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was speeding toward Haiti with a deckfull of helicopters for ferrying relief supplies, and the Pentagon had sent in a team to take over, secure, and operate the badly damaged national airport.
U.S. military aircraft also were flying in emergency communications gear to bypass Haiti's ruined telephone system and ferrying in assessment teams from the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development to figure out what's needed and how to get it there. Civilian rescue teams, mobilized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (the FEMA vilified in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina), were also en route, as were assessment teams from nongovernmental relief organizations such as the International Rescue Committee.
But even as the crisis response was unfolding, aid and military officials were warning privately that the main impact of this horrific disaster may not be clear for weeks or months.
Already, for example, aid officials are conferring about how to prevent the rapid spread of disease through the ravaged city. Other key concerns are that the tragedy could generate violence, reignite Haiti's political wars, and launch new waves of people fleeing in rickety boats across the Straits of Florida toward the United States.
The immediate issues, according to U.S. officials and disaster relief experts: probing the rubble for survivors, gathering what some officials said were thousands of dead, establishing emergency housing, and distributing food and clean water.
The already precarious lives of most Haitians have deepened the sense of urgency. The vast majority of Haitians live below the poverty line. One of the poorest nations on earth, Haiti's per capita income has stagnated or even declined since 1954.
Overgrazing and scavenging for firewood have devastated its mountainous landscape, and once fertile lands are scoured by erosion. Many families scrape by on meager crops of corn and beans from tiny, overworked plots. Others, especially in the Port-au-Prince slums of Cite Soleil, live on scavenged garbage and handouts from international aid that now have been disrupted by the destruction.

Haiti Coverage on Sphere:

Quake Survivors Cry for Help as Aftershocks Rattle Haiti

Haiti Fears Hundreds of Thousands of Quake Victims

Obama Promises All-Out Relief Effort in Haiti

UN Staffers Among Haiti's Dead and Missing

How to Track Quake Aftermath Online

In addition to being one of the world's poorest nations, Haiti also is one of the world's most turbulent and violent. In the late 18th century, Africa slaves revolted against French colonists and established the first independent black republic in 1804. Much of Haiti's subsequent history is one of coups, assassinations, and strongman rule.
And yet Haitians have survived, with a vibrant Creole culture of exuberant folk art and music and a strong belief in voodoo.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, musing Wednesday on Haiti's history of violence and misfortune, called it "biblical, the tragedy that continues to daunt Haiti and the Haitian people.''
Haiti's periodic political crises have unleashed waves of refugees bound for Florida in often overcrowded and leaky boats. In the 1970s, perhaps as many as 100,000 Haitians fled by boat; many were intercepted and eventually turned back by U.S. authorities.
In the winter of 1991-92, some 40,000 Haitians tried to escape during the political turmoil caused by a coup d'état against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide; many are thought to have perished at sea; others were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard, interned at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, and eventually returned to Haiti.
Two years later, as political violence in the capital intensified, President Clinton sent 20,000 U.S. troops into Haiti to return Aristide to power and restore security across the country. Operation Uphold Democracy lasted two years, but U.S. military advisers and a United Nations peacekeeping force have remained in Haiti, and political violence has continued sporadically.
Now, the long-term prospects for Haiti are not good, according to aid officials. Although damage assessments are not completed, the earthquake evidently has ruptured water and sewer lines and telephone service, crushed homes and schools, and wrecked businesses. It will take time just to clear away rubble.
Homeless Haitians will have to be housed for some time in temporary shelter, places that are hard to police against sexual violence, petty crime and disease, according to United Nations officials. Past experience has shown that diseases like cholera and malaria spread quickly in the aftermath of natural disasters.
And will violence ignite in the prolonged misery likely to follow Tuesday's destruction?
"It's frightening to think about -- there are always people who take advantage of crisis, even in New Orleans,'' said an official of a private relief organization working in Haiti. "And Haiti has such a fragile political system -- peoples' lives and livelihoods are at stake.''
Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, who heads U.S. Southern Command, the regional military organization, said Wednesday he may ask that a task force of warships and 1,200 combat Marines, organized as a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), be directed to Haiti. A MEU, embarked on ships with helicopters, humanitarian supplies and construction equipment, could be a key component of reconstruction projects in Haiti.
Or the Marines could be directed to quell violence and keep order.
Fraser, asked at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday whether there was widespread looting or other violence in Port-au-Prince, said: "I don't know the answer to it directly ... I'm still trying to understand what the situation is on the ground.
"I'm not going to speculate on the future,'' he told reporters. "We've got a very precise focus right now, and that's the disaster that Haiti has suffered. We're focused on the lifesaving measures that we need to do there.''
Tagged: haiti, haiti earthquake, HaitiEarthquake, relief aid, ReliefAid
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