CANADA/QUEBEC COLONY
Helping Haiti after its back-to-back disasters
Canadian charities are on the ground and on the Internet, accepting donations to help recovery efforts
Aid workers in Haiti are welcoming Canadian donations as they struggle to meet demand for medical services and shelter following last weekend's earthquake that left over 2,100 dead and thousands injured and homeless.
Efforts are now focused on urgent life-saving assistance in the Caribbean country following last week's back-to-back disasters — the 7.2-magnitude earthquake followed by a tropical storm, says Chiran Livera, a rapid response manager for the Canadian Red Cross's international operations.
"It's just a magnitude of one emergency after another," Livera said.
He was referring to the earthquake and storm hitting the country as it grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, political instability following last month's execution of president Jovenel Moïse, high rates of violent crime and rampant unemployment.
"The people, their resilience is incredible to withstand one, two, three, four emergencies like this," said Livera. "So we want to focus on helping
them regain their dignity and come back to self-sufficiency and help them through the recovery process."
Haiti has strong ties to Canada. Members of the largest Haitian community in Canada live in the census metropolitan area of Montréal, according to Stats Canada.
Donations roll in
The Red Cross has so far raised $700,000 via the Haiti Earthquake Appeal from individual Canadians and other private donations, Livera said. The funds are being used to purchase relief items locally in Haiti such as water, food and medicine. Additional supplies such as blankets, tarpaulins and jerrycans were brought in from a Panama warehouse.
Charities across Canada are accepting monetary donations because it is the fastest way to get supplies on the ground.
UNICEF Canada has set up an emergency fund. The Humanitarian Coalition, an umbrella group for 12 Canada-based international aid agencies, has set up a Haiti-specific relief program that is accepting donations at this website.
Haiti's unique geographic location makes it vulnerable to natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes. In 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake killed more than 250,000 and left more than 1.5 million homeless in the poverty-stricken country.
Roads washed away
On Thursday, lack of basic infrastructure was complicating the transport of food and medical supplies to villages after landslides caused by a tropical storm.
A major hospital in the capital of Port-au-Prince was shut down after the kidnapping of two doctors, including one of the country's few orthopaedic surgeons.
WATCH | Aid efforts in Haiti hindered by landslides caused by heavy rain
The goal on the ground in Haiti is two-pronged, says Livera, who speaks French and Haitian Creole and has visited the island for training and disaster relief.
The most immediate need for the country is medical aid, water, food, shelter and transportation to hospitals, he said.
But the Red Cross considers it equally important to invest in programs to train individual communities in Haiti to become self-sufficient with initiatives like community gardens, given how prone the country is to natural disasters.
"That's why it's so important to invest in preparedness and resilience of the people who make up the community there," Livera said. "It's community members helping community members."
'There's nothing': Misery a common scene as quake-ravaged Haiti grapples with a lack of aid
'The beds are full, the cupboards are empty. We need as much as we can get'
The courtyard of the Ofatma hospital in Les Cayes, Haiti, is a scene of abject misery right now.
People wait with arms that were crushed under cinder blocks, heads gashed open by a falling wall. There's children, with skin torn from their bodies, screaming in pain as someone tries to dress the wound.
All are waiting for treatment.
Dr. Edouard Destine has been working nearly non-stop since the 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the country's southwest on Saturday morning, killing more than 2,000 people and injuring some 12,000 others. He looks dazed as he wraps a cast onto a woman's broken arm.
It's taken many of these patients days to get past rock slides and washed out roads to seek help.
Destine, who is the hospital's orthopaedic surgeon and chief of staff, says they're running out of supplies, but that his staff is doing everything they can.
"We have to see the patients," he said.
Proper treatment is hard to come by right now. Dozens of staff and volunteers have been working around the clock — but they can only do so much.
"This building itself has suffered minor damage in the earthquake," said Brian Johnson, a retired paramedic from Ontario who flew down to help. "We can't use the surgical area because it's completely damaged."
Patients are lined up outside the building, under the awnings. As aftershocks still shake the area — and nerves — patients, doctors and family members scramble into the open area, seeking a safe space.
Nurses and other staff drag a man out into the courtyard on a bare mattress. He had arrived earlier that day with a broken pelvis, which they don't have the resources to treat. All they can do is wait to get him on a helicopter to Port-au-Prince.
Co-ordinating efforts is Canadian volunteer Valerie Rezpka. She's constantly on the move, assessing patients and marshalling what resources the hospital has left. Five days into the effort, you can hear a certain weariness in her voice.
"There's nothing in this hospital," she said. "The beds are full, the cupboards are empty. We need as much as we can get."
Water-logged camps
This region along the southwestern edge of Haiti is beautiful, poor and hot. After Saturday's quake, two tropical depressions tore through the area, bringing heavy winds and rain. Thousands of people were sleeping outside; they'd lost their homes or feared getting caught in another aftershock.
Hundreds of people are currently living in one tent city in Les Cayes's soccer field. These camps have popped up throughout the region. It was a pretty bare and bleak camp before, but the fierce storms have made it decidedly worse.
An estimated 7,000 homes were destroyed in the quake and another 12,000 damaged, leaving some 30,000 families homeless.
WATCH | Haiti residents fear aid isn't on the way:
"It's a misery, man," said Sydnay Annonce, who is living in the camp after his home was destroyed in the quake. His shelter here is made up of a few torn sheets of plastic and some scrap wood.
"There's a lot of people, their houses collapsed. They don't have anything. They don't have anywhere to go."
The camp's field was flooded after the storms, and now people's feet are swollen from walking barefoot for days in the mud. Health officials worry that waterborne diseases, such as cholera, will not be far behind.
Many of the people sheltering in this particular camp come from a local neighbourhood nestled beside the banks of a river. The earthquake shook a giant chunk of the riverbank loose and the rain washed more away.
Residents fear the rest will fall in, with the river washing away whatever is left of their damaged homes.
Standing on the remaining riverbank, Pierre Jonas says the real problem isn't the damage, but the fact that no one is coming to fix it.
"The big problem we have in Haiti?" he asks. "It's that we have no government."
A string of disasters
Haiti's political system has been fraught for decades. The earthquake in 2010 killed more than 200,000 people, and the price of rebuilding was pegged as high as $13.9 billion US — more than the entire country's GDP at the time. Then Hurricane Matthew hit in 2016.
Scars from the last disasters remain everywhere. Driving down the main street of Les Cayes, it can be hard to tell if something was damaged in the 2010 quake, the 2016 hurricane or this week's calamities.
Then last month, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, and a leadership vacuum became a leadership void.
Gang warfare has closed off certain areas surrounding the capital of Port-au-Prince, and roads into these disaster areas remain all but impassible due to threats of violence and kidnapping. Much-needed aid is stalled.
It's also all playing out against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has stretched health-care systems around the world.
From his perch looking over the river, Jonas said Haiti is in dire need, yet there doesn't seem to be anyone in a position to provide basic necessities.
"We need hospitals," he said. "We have no medicines in this country. We need schools. We need a lot of things."
But no one knows where those will come from, he said.
The situation is expected to worsen. Roads into the region's more remote areas are finally opening up, which means additional injured patients are flooding into hubs, like Les Cayes. And all that standing water in the tent camps means people will continue to get sick and need treatment.
The system here was being stretched to its limits before the earthquake hit. Now, nearly a week later, what little supplies they had are gone — and the wave of misery continues to roll in.
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