Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti — The numbers were apocalyptic: More than 220,000 people killed and 300,000 injured. Over 1 million people displaced from homes. About 280,000 houses either obliterated or damaged. An estimated 25 million cubic yards of rubble to be cleared, much of it from the narrow, congested streets of Port-au-Prince.
Haiti quake response largely a success
Medical care and food supplies arrived quickly, heading off the potential for widespread unrest, officials say. Progress on sanitation and shelter has been slower, posing the threat of a new crisis.
A man flirts with a woman at a tent city on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince,… (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles…)
Add to that a crippled government, its ministry buildings and presidential palace destroyed. And in a bitter coup de grace, aid organizations already working in Haiti before the Jan. 12 earthquake were left reeling, most notably the United Nations, which lost its top two officials and more than 80 others.
"When in the past have we ever had a catastrophe like this one, in which the capital of a country and its government has essentially disappeared?" said Gerard Gomez, a top humanitarian aid advisor to the U.N. leadership in Haiti.
Given those challenges, where does the relief effort stand two months after the quake? On two crucial fronts, it has been, broadly speaking, a success story. But on others, results have been far more mixed.
The ability to relatively quickly disburse large amounts of food and water and provide medical treatment, aid officials said, tamped down the potential for widespread panic and chaos in the streets of Port-au-Prince and elsewhere.
"There has been no rioting over food, and we avoided people dying of hunger or thirst," Gomez said. "This is no small accomplishment."
Progress has been considerably slower on shelter and sanitation issues, aid officials acknowledged, raising fears among experts of a second crisis when the region's torrential seasonal rains arrive in coming weeks.
The uneven pace at which aid has been delivered has also been a problem, as aid workers have struggled to map and reach the 400 or so tent camps that have popped up in and around the capital. Pockets of the city and many needy areas in its environs have gone unserved for weeks.
"We're not talking about reaching 1,000 people. We're talking about more than a million people, who are not all in one place, but who are in hundreds and hundreds of spontaneous camps," Gomez said. "It takes time. It takes plenty of time."
A recent report by Refugees International was critical of what it said was poor oversight of the relief effort by top U.N. officials in Haiti and the world body's ineffective coordination with local aid groups.
With so many groups working at varying levels of coordination, it is impossible to assess all aspects of the relief effort in Haiti, but markers of progress can be laid down on key issues being addressed on a large scale by the United Nations and other leading organizations.
Medical care
With countless people trapped alive in buildings and thousands suffering from crushed limbs, head trauma and other injuries, rescue operations and medical care were the first focus of the relief push.
Several search-and-rescue teams from the United States, France and elsewhere had arrived within a day or two of the quake, and more than 200 people trapped in collapsed buildings were saved, according to a U.N. tally.
And, although it certainly did not arrive in time for an unknown number who died before receiving attention, the medical response was also relatively swift, as teams of doctors and nurses from several countries fanned out across the city and other affected areas.
The University of Miami, for example, erected a field hospital on the airport grounds, where several hundred of the most seriously injured were treated. The U.S. military sent a hospital ship and other medical personnel, who treated about 5,000 of the injured, U.S. government officials reported.
Food and water
In the chaotic first two weeks after the quake, the U.N.'s World Food Program oversaw emergency handouts of military-style ready-to-eat meals and high-energy biscuits. On Feb. 1, the agency switched to a more orderly, daily distribution of two-week rice rations from 16 locations in the capital.
The decision to deliver only rice instead of adding oil, beans and other foodstuffs was deliberate, said Claude Jibidar, interim director in Haiti for the World Food Program, because the grain is a staple of the Haitian diet and could be imported and distributed quickly. The huge influx of rice also served to stabilize the skyrocketing prices being charged at markets in the wake of the quake, he said. At a rice handout early one morning last month, several hundred women stood pressed together for hours in a line that snaked down a street near the collapsed presidential palace. (In an effort to avoid rioting or fighting in distribution lines, only women were allowed to receive rice.)
Except for some jostling in line, the process went smoothly as a few dozen women at a time were admitted into the gated distribution area. As at all of the rice handouts, several armed U.N. peacekeeping soldiers kept watch from military vehicles and nearby rooftops.
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