Haiti: Another Disaster Lurks

Here's the key problem, folks, and it is intensely political -- though you haven't heard anything about it from the mass media, let alone Bill Clinton or Michelle Obama, who've done fly-ins here recently.

Three months after the quake, You've still got at least 1.5 mm people "living" in crowded tent/tarp shacks. Hurricane season is June-November here. NOAA says there could be 12-14 Carribean hurricanes this year alone.

In 2008, Haiti was hit by four of them, before the quake, when most people were living in concrete houses. Now those are all gone.

The Preval government has recently received nearly $1 billion from foreign donors and the EU, but it is not spending that money on new housing or relocation. Indeed, not long ago, President Preval was quoted as warning people to stay where they are -- because, he said, there was a danger of "new earthquakes."

Of course earthquakes are much more unpredictable than hurricanes. But Preval evidently doesn't want to face up to the fact that to relocate people to better housing and safer land, he's actually have to move very quickly -- and mandate relocation to rural areas where people came from, plus rapid building on gov and private lands near Port au Prince.

Nor has Bill Clinton really taken charge of this issue. There's lots of bold talk about "reconstructing Haiti," but it doesn't address the looming hurricane threat.

Furthermore, the Obama is still ignoring this threat. Apparently it doesn't want to be perceived as intervening in internal Haitian affairs.

Well, Earth to Obama: the US already crossed that bridge when boycotted trade with Haiti in the 1820s-1860s, occupied Haiti with thousands of Marines in 1915-1930, supported Papa Doc Duvalier and his son in the 1950s-1980s, and supported Gen. Cedras' 1991 coup, Aristede's first return to power in 1994, and the second ouster of Aristede in 2004.

Now it is time for another US intervention -- this one in the interests of saving lives, perhaps as many as were lost in the earthquake.

There's still time -- not much, but maybe just enough to get some of those empty thousands of FEMA trailers down here for people who can't go bsck to the countryside, plus mount a serious effort, mainly through incentives, to get folks able to move to do so. Right now before it is too late.

We hear that the world's donor community feels that it has done as much as it can do for Haiti, and that the "patient has stabilized." Unfortunely the weather gods didn't get that memo....

I



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Comments

[Mohamade]

8.8 on the Richter scale? That's ginormous.Of cousre, the region is notorious for volcanos and earthquakes. The problems would be fearful to imagine if a quake hit a big place like Santiago. Lima,i neighbouring Peru, has a history of devastating earthquakes, for example.

[Marcelo]

If Bill Gates, Bill If Bill Gates, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Obama, and dare I say Pat Robertson and his peer tvevanglist all doetnad 20 million dollars each you would have in excess of 200 million on top of the 100 million the usa already committed Haiti would have a great start! cont: