Haiti

Haiti mourn quake dead, find hope in own resilency

Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The air was choked with memory Wednesday in this city where everyone lost a brother, a child, a cousin or a friend. One year after the earthquake, Haitians marched down empty, rubble-lined streets singing hymns and climbed broken buildings to hang wreaths of flowers.

The landscape is much as the quake left it, thanks to a reconstruction effort that has yet to begin addressing the intense need. But the voices were filled with hope for having survived a year that seemed to get worse at every turn.

“We’ve had an earthquake, hurricane, cholera, but we are still here, and we are still together,” said Charlemagne Sintia, 19, who joined other mourners at a soccer stadium that served as an open-air morgue after the quake and later housed a tent camp.

Thousands gathered around the city to be with loved ones and pray. They flocked to the ruins of the once-towering national cathedral, to the soccer stadium, to parks, hillsides and the neighborhood centers.

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Still Trying to Rise Above the Rubble

Newsweek

One year ago today, Evelyn Margron was trapped beneath her collapsed Port-au-Prince home, her right arm crushed under several pounds of concrete, her grandson pinned below. It was the day that a 7.0-magnitude earthquake transformed Haiti’s capital city and the surrounding area into rubble, eventually killing some 230,000 people. Margron was not one of the fatalities. The 56-year-old country director for the Dutch human-rights group ICCO was pulled from the rubble and eventually treated in the Dominican Republic for her crushed chest, broken arm, and collarbone. “The people who got me out of the rubble—I did not know them and they did not know me. But it happened so many times that night,” Margron says in a nod to the solidarity that Haitians say was the predominant mood of the day.

Click HERE to read the full story as it appeared at Newsweek.

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Haiti: A bitter anniversary

Info Sur Hoy
Those who lived through the earthquake struggle to survive its aftermath

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Today, Haitians across the country will pause to remember the earthquake that devastated their nation exactly a year ago.

They will sing and pray in unison outside the ruins of Haiti’s national cathedral.

Some will gather to discuss the upcoming election; others will talk about the role the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has had in maintaining order; and others will discuss the reconstruction process.

But Islande Vilmeus will not be participating. While others choose to remember, the 30-year-old wants to forget – forget that her tonton, the uncle who raised her since her parents died at age 10, was among the about 300,000 who died in the earthquake.

She wants to forget that, two weeks ago, she returned from the market to find her 5-year-old son dead on the floor of her tent from an unknown cause. She said he might have been poisoned.

The boy’s body lies unclaimed at the local morgue since she can’t afford a funeral.

Vilmeus and her six other children survived the earthquake that brought their home crumbling to the ground. But they are not surviving its aftermath, she says, as she cradles her 10-month-old son Abraham who hasn’t eaten yet today.

Click HERE to read the full story as it appeared at Info Sur Hoy.

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Haiti: Reconstruction lagging behind schedule

Info Sur Hoy
One year after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians remain displaced

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Nearly a year since a 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed the nation’s capital and surrounding areas, much work remains in the reconstruction process that’s way behind schedule.

More than a million remain displaced in unsanitary – and unsustainable – tent cities, many without consistent access to clean drinking water, according to the U.S. State Department.

The majority of buildings throughout Port-au-Prince are in the same collapsed state they were in after being pulverized on Jan. 12, 2010. Fewer than two million of the nine million cubic meters of rubble have been removed, and debris still clogs city streets, according to the U.S. State Department.

“I think there’s a general feeling – and we share this feeling – that the reconstruction is much slower than we had hoped,” said Eric Overvest, Haiti Country Director for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). “The first six months, all the attention went to humanitarian assistance, which was very necessary, but the change to development started very late.”

Click HERE to read the full article as it appeared at Info Sur Hoy.

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Haiti: Voters await final results

Info Sur Hoy

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Political tension is mounting in Haiti as candidates and voters await the final results from the November presidential election.

Controversy erupted as to which candidates will advance to the Jan. 16 runoff after thousands of voters were turned away from the polls during the first round of voting since their names did not appear on registries.

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Haiti: Candidates dispute results, supporters rally

Info Sur Hoy

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti’s electoral council will allow candidates to re-appeal the preliminary results of the nation’s recent presidential election after its offer to re-tabulate votes was rejected by the two leading opposition candidates.

Candidates have until Dec. 15 to submit a new formal appeal.

Thousands of would-be voters were turned away from the polls on Nov. 28 because their names did not appear on voter registration lists, or because those displaced by Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake had not re-registered in their new voting locations.

Michel Martelly, an opposition candidate and renowned pop-singer, finished third behind President René Préval-endorsed candidate Jude Célestin by less than 1% of the vote, according to preliminary results.

Click HERE to read the full story as it appeared at Info Sur Hoy.

Haiti: Presidential election heads to runoff

Info Sur Hoy

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Mirlande Manigat and Jude Célestin are the top vote-getters of Haiti’s troubled presidential election and will compete in a Jan. 16 runoff, according to preliminary results announced by Haiti’s electoral council (CEP) on Dec.7.

The winner will oversee the about US$10 billion pledged by international donors in post-earthquake reconstruction aid as Haiti’s next president, replacing René Préval.

Click HERE to see the full story as it appeared at Info Sur Hoy.

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Election controversy overshadows humanitarian crisis and recovery

Newsweek

Haiti’s election was supposed to further its democratic legacy by selecting a new president to lead the nation’s post-earthquake reconstruction. Instead, it’s become a huge distraction from that herculean task. Demonstrations are frequent: thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, chanting antigovernment slogans and setting fire to tires and barricades to protest the disputed results. All this is going on as the nation’s cholera epidemic continues to infect more than 1,000 people a day, and the 1.3 million Haitians still living in unsanitary tent camps since last January’s earthquake feel forgotten.

Click HERE to read the full story as it appeared at Newsweek.

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Presidential candidates lead protest against disputed Haiti election

Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)- Frustrated presidential candidates led a march through Haiti’s capital Thursday to demand officials annul an election they say was tainted by fraud.

At least four of 19 candidates on Sunday’s ballot walked with hundreds of supporters to an electoral council office. They denounced electoral officials, President Rene Preval and the ruling Unity party’s candidate, state construction company chief Jude Celestin, chanting: “Prison for Preval, liberty for Haiti!”

“These were not elections. People were not allowed to vote and there was stuffing of the election boxes … We need democratic elections,” candidate Charles Henri-Baker, a factory owner, told The Associated Press.

The presidential hopefuls were part of a group of 12 candidates who called for voting to be canceled while polls were open, alleging the election was rigged in favor of Celestin.

Click HERE to read the full Associated Press story as it appeared at the Star Tribune.

U.S. aid divides candidates, voters in Haiti’s elections

Uncategorized

The Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation is on the verge of receiving one of the largest sums of foreign disaster relief dollars history—and 19 people are eager to administer it as they contend for Haiti’s presidency on November 28.

Samdy Pascal is decidedly less excited. The eighteen-year-old mother who lost her home and her school in the January earthquake has no job, so she spends her days scrubbing clothes in front of her makeshift shack not far from the mountain of rubble that was once Haiti’s national palace. Behind her stands a statue of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who led the nation to independence from France two centuries ago.

“All of my life, I listen and I read in the books about Dessalines and Haiti’s independence. But I don’t think Haiti is an independent country because we still have the same problems,” says Pascal. “We can’t find anything to eat, to drink, to go to the hospital is a problem, we don’t have any house to live in. The foreign NGOs have to receive the money because they can do better than the government. I don’t think we have independence.”

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Samdy Pascal, 18, says she has no faith in her government’s ability to implement U.S. reconstruction funds. -Jacob Kushner

 

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Hurricane Tomas floods quake-shattered Haiti town

Associated Press

A man walks in a flooded street during the passing of Hurricane Tomas in Leogane, Haiti, Friday Nov. 5, 2010. (AP / Ramon Espinosa)

LEOGANE, Haiti – Hurricane Tomas flooded the earthquake-shattered remains of a Haitian town on Friday, forcing families who had already lost their homes in one disaster to flee another. In the country’s capital, quake refugees resisted calls to abandon flimsy tarp and tent camps.

Driving winds and storm surge battered Leogane, a seaside town west of Port-au-Prince that was near the epicenter of the Jan. 12 earthquake and was 90 percent destroyed. Dozens of families in one earthquake-refuge camp carried their belongings through thigh-high water to a taxi post on high ground, waiting out the rest of the storm under blankets and a sign that read “Welcome to Leogane.”

“We got flooded out and we’re just waiting for the storm to pass. There’s nothing we can do,” said Johnny Joseph, a 20-year-old resident.

The growing hurricane with 75 mph (120 kph) winds battered the western tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula and the cities of Jeremie and Les Cayes.

At least three people died trying to cross swollen rivers, Haiti civil protection officials said. The hurricane had earlier killed at least 14 people in the eastern Caribbean.

Click HERE to read the full Associated Press article as it appeared at the Boston Globe.

Haiti cholera outbreak: blame game begins

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Residents of a camp for displaced Haitians fill jugs with clean water, Oct. 26, 2010. An outbreak of cholera has killed nearly 300 people. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Nine days into a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 303 and infected more than 4,700, Haitians are holding their breath and waiting to see if the outbreak can be stopped.

Haiti’s humanitarian relief organizations are posed to call their response to the outbreak a success, pointing to the quick mobilization of doctors to affected areas and sufficient stockpiles of IV bags. So far the disease hasn’t spread through Haiti’s tent camps where 1.3 million people still live, and the organizations are hopeful they’ll soon be able to contain the outbreak.

But critics say Haiti’s gruesome brush with cholera represents a failure by these groups whose job is to prevent exactly this type of disaster in the first place.

Click HERE to see the full story as it appeared at the Global Post.

Health workers fight to contain Haiti cholera outbreak

Associated Press

By Jacob Kushner

The Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI—A spreading cholera outbreak in rural Haiti threatened to outpace aid groups as they stepped up efforts Saturday hoping to keep the disease from reaching the squalid camps of earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince.

Health officials said at least 208 people had died and 2,394 others were infected in an outbreak mostly centred in the Artibonite region north of the capital.

But the number of cases in towns near Port-au-Prince were rising, and officials worried the next target will be hundreds of thousands of Haitians left homeless by January’s devastating quake and now living in camps across the capital.

Click HERE to read the full AP story as it appeared at TheStar.com