Another Disaster in Haiti Tonight?
A new potentially devastating natural disaster with tragic human consequences could be brewing in Haiti. This event could make a disease outbreak there much worse as well. Tropical Storm Tomas will be moving over Haiti and the Dominican Republic tonight and Friday, and the National Hurricane Center has issued a hurricane warning for Haiti. The center also says rainfall in Haiti from Tomas may total 5 to 10 inches with isolated amounts up to 15 inches. Rainfall amounts this high could produce a catastrophic flooding calamity.
Haiti has endured decades of death and destruction for a variety of reasons. The latest natural disaster to strike this desperately poor county was the earthquake of January 12, 2010. The epicenter of the 7.0 quake was just 25 miles west of the capital of Port-au-Prince — an estimated 230,000 people were killed and 300,000 were injured. Additionally, 250,000 homes collapsed and 30,000 commercial buildings were either heavily damaged or destroyed. As a result, over one million people were made homeless. Surely that would be enough for one year — or a hundred years — yet on top of all that, a cholera outbreak is threatening to overrun the county. Now, with Tomas bearing down on Haiti, the potential for the outbreak to spread could increase dramatically.
What makes Haiti so vulnerable to tropical storms is near complete deforestation. In 1923, 60% of Haiti was covered with trees. Today, only 2% of the country has forest. There are several reasons for this, but the bottom line is that erosion is a terrible problem anytime it rains. Tropical rains can be very heavy and tropical storms have massive amounts of water stored in their clouds. You might think a hurricane would be the worst possible storm that could strike Haiti, but not necessarily. A weaker tropical storm, or even a tropical depression, if moving slowly enough can unleash torrents of rain. These less-developed storms can unload as much as 10 to 20 inches of rainfall in one day, even more if the storm stalls over an area. You don’t need a hurricane to get devastating floods.
Compounding the deforestation problem in Haiti is the topography. Three mountain ranges run across the country, covering two-thirds of the land — the peak elevation is 8,793 feet. When clouds are forced up over mountains, the amount of precipitation is increased due to a process called orographic uplift. As the clouds are lifted up over higher terrain they are pushed into cooler atmospheric temperatures. This increases the relative humidity of the clouds, and subsequently increases the amount of precipitation they produce.
Damn, Haiti’s going to get washed out to sea.
This whole thing with Haiti is disgusting. There is so much money directed to this country it should be a floating fortress by now!!!
Instead we keep hearing stories of destitute people!, impending doom! What is going on down there!?
We have 2 friends running Grace Camp in Carrefour, set-up after the earthquake. 25K people in tents. It’s clean and orderly and safe. Some of the people have homes to go back to but don’t want to leave the camp because it’s safer there. My friends are about to starve to death down there as volunteers. They eat donated MRE’s to survive, but they do it on a shoe string because they love Haiti. The money is pledged, but just isn’t reaching the ground there. There’s rice and tents and stuff, but no system in place to start re-building infrastructure. Nobody in the government can be trusted to handle the money and not steal it, basically. The money won’t be released by the US and other countries until it is secure. They don’t even really have a banking system there, everything is done in cash. Scattered attempts at building huts and other temporary structures are happening thru private charities, but no re-building of collapsed apartments, etc. They haven’t even been able to clear all the rubble out of the streets yet, 9 months later. Nothing works in Haiti, it’s just completely non-functional. Half the population is illiterate. Most don’t even grasp germ theory or basic hygiene and have to be taught. Systemically, the country is set up for failure. Parents have to pay to send their elementary age kids to school, so most don’t go, as the average daily wage is like $2/day. The stupid government prints everything in French including the school books when Creole is what is spoken and understood by the people. They have stratified their own society by making people think they are superior if they speak French and inferior if they speak Creole. But a sweeter, more beautiful people are hard to find. Haiti just can’t catch a break. And this is an hour from Miami. It’s just unreal.
And also, to add, the money that IS coming there is not being spent as wisely as it could be. The big business of “charity” and the UN are funding workers to stay in relative luxury, renting estates and driving $100,000 humvees around while pretending to act as security forces, but not accomplishing much. Meanwhile. well-meaning do-gooders come down in groups to do the habitat for humanity thing and don’t get that much done, either. It’;s better than nothing, but 15 people from a church can spend $50,000 on plane tickets and hotels, and spend 5 days sorta building a couple of huts. When if they just sent the $50,000 down there, with $40,000 of it in building materials, (if you can get the gov’t to actually allow it in without stealing it) they could employ 50 Haitians for 6 months to build their own darn houses. Haitians need work, they want to work, but poverty is Haiti’s main export and the gov’t has a vested interest in keeping the donations flowing in. Haitians don’t need to be given things- they need to be able to earn it themselves. It’s a sorry situation, indeed.
In two comments you answered all the questions of why Haiti is a failure.
No honest government. No education. Millions of people who call on the rest of the world and their money when a disaster hits. Millions of people of Haiti who will not or do not participate in reconstruction after every disaster and depend on work, money and labor from without their own country. The hand is always out.
Okay not to get political, but I have to ask, how is the Dominican Republic holding up with all of this? It is on the same island after all, is the 2/3′s of the island it sits on just as deforested? Are they having the same disease and flood issues?
The DR is doing just fine. They don’t eat the leaves, the bark, the refuse let alone the trees. You think they want Haitians in the DR?
Not a chance. Disease, poverty and unconquerable ignorance.
Yet…we let them in here with TB, cholera, polio and to many other diseases we conquered years ago. Why?
Humanitarian nonsense. PC gone berserk is more like it. We could ( and already have ) spend another trillion + on that mud hole….and they’d still look in awe at a shovel!
The entire country need to be washed out to sea….unpopulated and let it come back to what it once was. Sorry….but Haiti is way beyond redeemable or salvageable.
Haiti is itself a disaster and the use of the same word on top of that nearly superfluous. Too many people living a come-what-may lifestyle with no thought to the future.
As long as Haiti is known more for Voodoo than for a place renowned for generating Christian saints, is it surprising that the MSM refer to it as the place God forgot?
I know Pat Robertson caught flack for it, but what is there to prove him wrong, other than angry words?
It occurs that we have a whole heaping mess of used FEMA trailers sitting around that were declared “unhealthy”.
I reckon that a used FEMA trailer with some fumes in it would seem like a suite at the Ritz-Carlton compared to living in a makeshift tent and contracting cholera.
(Not that it would do much good at this point, and few listen to me anyway).
Poor wretched buggers down there.
A country such as Haiti, which as been under a corrupt ridden, wretched type of oligarchy since its inception ~150 years ago.. what’s to do?
I’m with commenter Abdul Kareema Wheat.. some societies need a reset button.
This is the epitome of such a scenario.