Disaster on repeat in Haiti

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

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🗓️ 19 August 2021

⏱️ ? minutes

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Summary

Haitians face devastation after two natural disasters hit the island. And what the tragedies have exposed about the country’s preparedness.

Last weekend, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake caused widespread destruction and death in Haiti. Then, torrential rain from Tropical Storm Grace hit the island. Now, Haitians are recovering from two back-to-back natural disasters while reeling from political turmoil caused by the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse last month. Caribbean bureau chief Anthony Faiola reports on how public officials and citizens living close to the epicenter of the earthquake are grappling with the compounded loss and tragedy.

When an earthquake hits, it’s not the quake itself that kills people — it’s often the rattled buildings that collapse with people inside, or on top of them. And in Haiti, earthquakes are more dangerous than in other countries, because buildings there aren’t designed to withstand them. Reginald Desroches is a Haitian American engineer and provost of Rice University. After Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, he traveled there about a dozen times to investigate why the damage was so severe and to figure out how to reinforce the structures that remained standing.

Listen to our episode on the assassination of Haiti’s president and how years of U.S. intervention in the Carribean country contributed to the chaos we’re seeing now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the days since an earthquake killed more than 2,000 people in Haiti, the country has
0:13.8	been in mourning and anguish.
0:20.2	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.
0:25.6	I'm Martine Powers.
0:27.6	It's Thursday, August 19th.
0:30.1	Today we take you on the ground in Haiti, where tragedies are compounding one after another.
0:36.1	The country is still recovering from a massive earthquake more than a decade ago that left
0:39.9	more than 200,000 people dead.
0:43.0	Last month, the president was assassinated in his own home.
0:46.5	Then, this past weekend, another earthquake hit a rural part of the country in the south,
0:52.0	and a tropical storm hit, complicating search and rescue efforts.
1:00.9	You know, the assassination of President Moise in July probably hasn't helped the government
1:06.0	response time, but most local officials we talked to expected a fractured, hobbled response
1:13.5	from the national government regardless of who was in charge.
1:16.5	That's Caribbean beer, a chief Anthony Fiaola.
1:18.7	He is in Haiti now reporting from the hardest-hit parts of the country.
1:22.5	Haiti has become the dominion of warlords and warlord-like gangs, which control part of
1:29.0	the country.
1:30.0	In fact, several parts of the country, particularly in the capital, including some of the main
1:34.6	arteries that lead to the devastated areas in the south in the southern peninsula.
1:40.0	There have been efforts to negotiate a truce with these gangs to let aid flow, but it's
1:44.8	a shaky truce at best, and kidnappings, including of doctors, as well as other criminal
	...

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