Haiti Flails in Sandy's Wake
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| Richemond Gary, a 33-year-old mechanic in the farming town of Marin-Foujy, on Saturday tossed a rock at the site of his home, which was washed away by the muddy torrent of Rivière Grise during Hurricane Sandy |
| November 4, 2012 - RIVIÈRE GRISE, Haiti—Three days of torrential downpours and strong winds brought by Hurricane Sandy destroyed much of Haiti's fragile agriculture and have put a million and a half Haitians at risk for hunger, the United Nations' humanitarian-aid coordination office said over the weekend.
Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, last week declared a state of emergency to deal with the aftermath of the storm that hit on Oct. 24. It battered the country's south and dealt a major blow to Haiti's subsistence agriculture, destroying 70% of the country's crops. Floods and landslides killed at least 54 people and the toll is expected to rise, government officials said. In neighboring Cuba, Sandy killed 11 people and savaged the country's coffee and sugar crops when it plowed through Santiago de Cuba, the country's second- largest city. "One and one half million Haitians are now at serious risk of hunger," George Ngwa, spokesman for the U.N.'s humanitarian mission in Haiti, said in an interview. Even before the hurricane, it was a struggle for half of Haiti's roughly 10 million people to get enough food amid high prices and Haitians' meager incomes, he said. Poor roads and communications have hindered damage assessments and relief efforts. Haitian government and international agencies say Sandy destroyed or damaged at least 21,000 houses, affected the livelihood of some 200,000 people, many of them subsistence farmers, and caused at least $104 million of damage. The final toll is likely to be much higher once relief workers reach hard-hit areas cut off by flooded roads and rivers, relief organization officials say. "We're beyond desperate," 42-year old Jean-Claude Pierre, a truck driver from the farming town of Marin-Foujy, said on Saturday, looking down at the flooded river bed of Rivière Grise, which runs through farmlands outside the capital of Port-au-Prince. "Where you see the muddy waters, there used to be dry land. Hundreds of homes were engulfed, many fields destroyed. Not one tree is left." Further down the ravaged river bank, 83-year-old Oswald Jean-Baptiste sat in a rocking chair gazing at muddy water running through an area he said had been planted with plantains, beans, coconuts and mangos. "All my fields are gone, and so is the land," he said. "The river flows where there was land and food." The hurricane damage is the latest in a series of hits to Haiti's agriculture this year. First, a drought in the north withered crops, and then tropical storm Isaac lashed the island in August. "Now Sandy has finished off most of the crops," Mr. Ngwa said. He estimates 90% of Haiti's crops have been destroyed by natural disasters this year. The Haitian government is appealing to the international community for help, but donors and international aid agencies are stretched thin as they try to meet pledges for the country's reconstruction made after an earthquake leveled the capital of Port-au-Prince in 2010, killing some 300,000 people. Potential food-price increases worry international and Haitian officials. Haiti imports most of its food, and prices have risen this year, recently fueling protests over the high cost of livingin the chronically unstable country, which had widespread food riots in 2008. The government said last week it would compensate victims by sending about $25 to victims' cellphones, and provide an additional $2 million in aid to the West Department, where Rivière Grise is, to help some 95,000 families with their losses. Residents said the help hadn't yet arrived. "We've not gotten one cent nor seen any official here," Mr. Jean-Baptiste said. Government officials couldn't be reached for comment. The government also said it would distribute food to the most at risk.Haitian television last week showed images of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe delivering supplies to rain-soaked communities. But large areas of the south are still unreachable by land. U.N. helicopters are flying in supplies. The flooding has raised fears of a resurgence in cholera cases. Since a major outbreak in October 2010, 600,000 people have contracted the disease that has killed more than 7,500 Haitians. While while cases rise during heavy downpours, the epidemic is declining, Mr. Ngwa said. "There was an increase of about 200 to 300 cases during Sandy, especially in the south, but overall it's slowing down," he said. He said there were 8,228 cases of cholera in October, up from 7,500 in September. |
 Before and After Sandy: Aerial Views Satellite images taken before and after the arrival of the Sandy superstorm along the East Coast show damage to houses, businesses, roads, and beaches.
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Belated hurricane relief headed to battered Caribbean islands
Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles
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| Residents make their way through the flooded streets of La Plaine, in northwest Haiti. Credit: Carl Juste / Miami Herald |
November 2, 2012: United Nations relief agencies are heading up a global mission to bring food, shelter and construction materials to Caribbean islands battered by super storm Sandy last week -- a belated response by the world body whose New York headquarters and staff were themselves hard hit by the deluge.
After a three-day closure amid the torrential rains and disrupted power, communications and transportation, U.N. agencies have swung into action to organize emergency aid to Haiti and coordinate the dispatch of relief supplies throughout the Caribbean.
More than 1.2 million Haitians are facing "food insecurity" and at least 15,000 homes were destroyed when the huge storm's drenching periphery lashed the world's poorest nation, where about 350,000 were still homeless and sheltering in tents nearly three years after the devastating earthquake of January 2010.
A yearlong drought and damage from Hurricane Isaac in August had already taken their toll on food production in Haiti and Sandy has significantly worsened the crisis, Johan Peleman, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti, told U.N. Radio in an interview.
"With this new tropical storm, we fear that a great deal of the harvest which was ongoing in the south of the country may have been destroyed completely," Peleman said.
Many of the rugged dirt roads that provide the only access to storm victims in Haiti's mountainous interior have been rendered impassible by the torrential rains of the last week, Peleman said.
In New York, U.N. officials said they had reports of at least 54 Haitians killed as a result of the storm. At least 11 people were reportedly killed in Cuba, where the storm damaged or destroyed 188,000 homes and inflicted severe damage on about 245,000 acres of the vital sugar crop in the eastern part of the island, a U.N. report estimated Wednesday.
The opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation appealed to the government of President Raul Castro to allow foreign relief agencies to bring food and supplies to the stricken island. An array of religious and nongovernmental organizations, including Catholic Relief Services and Outreach Aid to the Americas, announced relief missions to Cuba, according to InterAction, an alliance of U.S.-based agencies. The Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations dispatched three plane-loads of aid for Cuba on Thursday, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Storm-related deaths were also reported in Jamaica, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, with the U.N. reporting at least 71 killed across the Caribbean in Sandy's wake.
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Haiti: More Than One Million People Face Food Insecurity, UN Says
Caribbean Journal staff
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| Flooding in Haiti (MINUSTAH Photo: Logan Abassi) |
November 1, 2012: Approximately 1.2 million people in Haiti are facing food insecurity due to the residual effects of Hurricane Sandy, according to Johan Peleman, the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ operation in Haiti.
Between 15,000 and 20,000 people’s houses in Haiti have been destroyed, damaged or flooded by the storm, the UN said.
The OCHA said it was “particularly concerned” because of the long drought that followed this year’s earlier severe storm, Tropical Storm Isaac.
“Now, with this new tropical storm, we fear that a great deal of the harvest which was ongoing in the south of the country may have been destroyed completely,” Peleman said Thursday. “Already, the drought and the previous storm had hit the northern part of the country very badly, and we had seen the levels of food insecurity rise there — with the south being hit now, we are going to face in the next couple of months very serious problems of malnutrition and food insecurity.”
Another 350,000 people in Haiti are still living in temporary camps for people displaced by Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
“The most vulnerable IDP’s [internally displaced persons] that were living in camps have been evacuated before the storm and we are now, with the humanitarian community and the UN family, repairing tents, handing out new tarpaulins so that they can go back to live in more favourable conditions because a lot of light structures were obviously completely destroyed by the storm,” Peleman said.
He also said that it was expected that the number of cholera cases in Haiti would surge.
“The country is relatively well-prepared, but it is also very vulnerable to this type of disaster, not just because of the poverty, but because of decades of deforestation and erosion,” he said.
The UN’s MINUSTAH peacekeeping mission in Haiti is currently working with Haiti’s government to deal with the continued impact of the storm, from helping with logistics to clearing roads.