DAY 5: January 16, 2010

I was sleeping on the floor in the office now. Thankfully, the Save team had an extra sleeping bag to loan me for the time being. We had an engineer come by the office to do an assessment of the building and it was determined that the two wings of the building were safe to use, but that the middle section should not be used. The 2nd floor of the left wing was the section that Cross International rents. With 30 people working in such a small space, we did some consolidating and offered to open up some of our space to Save staff.

Cell phones and internet began working again, and I quickly found that I had received over 200 e-mails in just a few days. The days were long as I tried to spend as much time as possible in the field during the daylight hours. Meetings, e-mails, and catching up on news went late into the nights.

Day 5

I woke up early to get some computer work done before the Save staff would show up at the office. Things got pretty chaotic during the day with so many people running around, so quiet time with power and internet access was very valuable. We covered all of the standard topics in the morning meeting: Security, Logisitcs, Media, Communications, IT, Finance, Operations, Human Resources, etc. Then the programs sector areas - Food, Water, Health, Nutrition, Shelter, Hygiene, Sanitation,

I had appreciated time working with Kathryn on assessments in Port-au-Prince, so we decided to team up again for a second day of assessments, this time out in Leogane and Petit-Goave. We had heard reports that “Leogane was flat” and that Petit-Goave was also in bad shape. We needed to know what the situation was out there, whether the hospital was functioning, and whether or not people were receiving any of the attention of the international community.

I took a deep breath as we hit the road. It would be a long ride through the city. As we sat in traffic I was forced to look long and hard at some of the down houses and buildings. I couldn’t help but imagine what the people who had lived there had gone through in the past few days. There were signs posted all over the city that read, “Help, need food, water, medicine.” I struggled with the decision of whether or not to open the window for pictures for the smell outside was horrific.

As we drove through the outskirts of Port-au-Prince and Carrefour, I was surprised to see that the road was in relatively good condition. There were displaced people everywhere. While some people slept in the street and others were staying in camps, I noticed that thousands of people were fleeing the city by the minute. Trucks and buses were filling up with people and all of their belongings by the second. Some of them were leaving in search of health care. Others were hoping to go and live with their extended family in their hometown. We noted areas where camps had formed so that we could relay our findings to our office and other stakeholder organizations to better ensure that the people would receive needed attention.

They were right, Leogane was flat. I couldn’t believe how far out of town the damage extended. Here I had originally thought that the hardest hit area might be up by our office. The fact was, the entire West department was wrecked and everyone was going to have to start from scratch. Haiti as I knew it would never be the same. St. Croix, the public Hospital in Leogane, was intact, but had some significant damage. Kathryn had previously worked at this hospital and was very taken back when she saw that the guest house where she had lived had been ripped apart in the earthquake. We met Susie Parker, who now works at the hospital with her husband Jon. She indicated that she and her husband wanted to reopen the hospital to begin taking patients, but we had our doubts. The buiding had cracks in the walls and given the powerful aftershocks that were occurring on a regular basis, Kathryn and I felt that it would not have been safe. We were told that the local nursing school was now being used to serve thousands of people, and that the list of their needed supplies was growing quickly.
We ran into some reporters from AFP who told us that after walking around town all day we were the first sign of any international relief presence in Leogane. Hopefully that would change soon.


The road to Petit-Goave was passable, but partially blocked by large boulders in several areas. The town was also in very bad shape, but not quite as bad as Leogane. We spoke to several different groups in the community. One group at a small camp provided us with some details about their experience over the course of the week and the difficulties that they were facing. There were some mobile clinics up and running where the wounded were being cared for, but the displaced had not received any services. People were kind and patient with us as they answered our questions. They had no way of obtaining clean water, and the shelter they were sleeping under was inadequate. Families took care of each other as they pooled their resources and shared food and water as it became available.

Again, the road back into Port was quiet. We decided to take a different route back up the hill in Port-au-Prince. Sadly, as we drove through the West side of downtown Port-au-Prince, the damage was unavoidable. The place was a freaking mess. Every building was ruined. If it wasn’t already down, then it would need to be torn down anyways. What are they going to do with all of this rubble ? Where is it going to go ? Who is going to remove it? Would it make more sense to rebuild the city somewhere else ? So may questions, so few answers.