Earthquakes - Haiti Flashcards
What year did the Haiti earthquake take place?
2010
What magnitude was the Haiti earthquake?
7 - Richter scale
How many people did the Haiti earthquake kill?
Over 200,000
How long after the earthquake was Haiti still in the emergency phase?
A year - only after 2 years was there signs of reconstruction
What is Haiti’s GNI?
$660 per capita (per annum) - very poor despite population of 9.8 million
What percentage of people have HIV/AIDS in Haiti?
2.2% of the 15-49 year old population (very high)
What percentage of national GDP was made up from remittances sent homes by family members abroad? (2008)
32%
Impacts of hurricane hazards preceding the earthquake
2004 Storm Jeanne - killed 3,000
2008 - 4 hurricanes - 800 deaths, 60% of harvest destroyed, landslides destroyed homes and roads
Why is Haiti susceptible to landslide hazards?
Only 2% of land is forested - deforestation for charcoal manufacturing
Landslides common in heavy hurricane rain
What plate boundaries are beneath Haiti?
Conservative strike-slip faults
2010 - movement in the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault system. This had been locked for 250 years. Caused land movement of 1.8m.
What is the capital of Haiti? How much of the capital was destroyed?
Port-au-Prince
60%
What were the factors affecting Haiti’s vulnerability?
Only 33% had access to clean tap water (beforehand)
70% on less than $2 a day. Unemployment rate up to 90%.
Poor building regimes - not earthquake resistant
Many public services provided by UN and NGOs - historical poor local and national governance (unstable)
86% of Port-au-Prince in slums - mass urban-rural migration. Underfunded healthcare. Lack of emergency plan.
Seismically active and along the hurricane belt
How may deaths were there? What personnel were killed?
230,000
100 UN personnel killed
25% of civil servants killed
How many deaths in Haiti were due to the cholera outbreak (2011)?
6,900
What was the total cost of damage?
$8B
How many prisoners escaped? What prison?
4,000 - Prison Civile
What was the early aid given to Haiti?
Neighbouring Dominican Republic was one of the first, sending water, food and rescue machinery. They also loosened border control and let Haiti citizens in hospitals.
Aid was restricted due to most of the airport being damaged - queues in the skies. Aid ships turned away from the devastated port. Priority was given to security troops arriving, not emergency aid - bad government coordination.
1500 camps in Port-au-Prince were set up - there was only one delivery of drinking water each week - cholera.
How were the dead treated in Haiti?
Poorly - corpses in the rubble began to decay in the heat - morgues were overcrowded.
To avoid more disease, governance justified burials in mass graves, usually before the dead could be identified.
What UN official died in the earthquake?
The Humanitarian Coordinator - it was 3 weeks before aid organisations could meet with the replacement holder.
What was the issue with NGO aid?
Very few spoke French - the needs of the suffering were not met - most NGOs operated from a top-down approach.
There was no linkage, so projects were left half done - some had reasonable aid, some had none.
Operational costs were high - so many NGO workers required accommodation and transport vehicles.
Secondary responses of the Haiti earthquake
6 months later, 98% of the rubble remained and 1.6 million were still in temporary camps. Funding was poorly distributed.
The World Bank cancelled half of Haiti’s debt and gave the country 5 years of no repayment. The institution started community-driven development projects to rebuild. These were scarce. Rural water systems in 6 locations - took the pressure off the city.
Cash for work programmes - 20% of jobs had disappeared. Buildings not destroyed could be flagged as unsafe to work in.
What were the problems for women in the Haiti camps?
Rape and attacks within the camps - tents have little security. Lack of privacy in washing facilities. Badly lit, no policing - increased gang culture. Exacerbated the pre-disaster lack of care for women.
What was recorded in October of the Haiti earthquake?
Cholera - the country had not experienced this for a century.
Why was the cholera outbreak so controversial?
The strain was from south-east Asia, where the UN Peacekeeping force had been (Nepal).
By November 2011, 6,900 had died from it, with more than 500,000 cases reported.
Cholera can be treated with antibiotics and rehydration salts, but lack of expertise and organisation counteracted this.
(Poor waste management, lack of drinking water)
The disease got classed as endemic.
