Haiti – Day 2: Arrival

Port-au-Prince to Carrefour

At around 9am we were informed that our ride had arrived at the airport, so we piled our 12 duffel bags onto a carriage and brought them out to the front of the airport terminal. Everywhere you looked people were bustling and pushing and trying to carry your bags for you, and though we handed them off to some Haitians who were there to help us, few of us really had any idea if we were handing them off to the right people. Fortunately, it turned out we had. Our drivers had come in a pickup and another SUV along with three helpers, and after piling all of our bags into the bed of the pickup we set out to our destination.

As soon as we stepped out into the sun we were immediately taken over by the heat and chaos – a relentless Caribbean sun and humidity coupled with throngs of people walking, standing, pushing and driving with no obvious organization. To make matters more claustrophobic, the heat and humidity were compounded wth overwhelming exhaust from trucks and motorbikes, along with their persistent, ear-ringing horns. Crowds of people had gathered outside the airport terminal to wait, in hopes of getting some food or water, or just to watch, and once out onto the main road, the traffic became so congested you had to roll up the window to keep from choking on the smog and the smoke from burning trash piles along the roadside. When the traffic did move, it was often hard to tell if you were on the right side of the road as the cars and trucks drove wherever there was an opening, and the motorbikes weaved in and out between the bigger vehicles.

Once out onto the open road you could see lines of Haitians standing behind the airfield wall staring at all the planes and helicopters and military convoys patrolling their airstrip. For a people who prided themselves on their history of ousting several foreign rulers, for many it was probably a very sobering experience to see their country once again overtaken by foreign governments – and perhaps humiliating, knowing that these same foreigners were their greatest hope. Not far along across the road, we could see what would be one of the larger refugee camps in all of Haiti, the Daihatsu Camp (named after the adjoining car dealership), which looked like a vast sea of blankets and sheets and tarps all crowded together, struggling to claim whatever space they could as they climbed a rocky hillside.

Only a few minutes out of the airport and it became quite apparent the level of destruction that had been left behind. While much has been said of the construction methods employed in Haiti –- no uniform building codes, too much sand in the cement, improper construction supervision, faulty materials, among many others -– few buildings seemed to have fallen in the same way, save the ones that had fallen completely and totally into a pile of rubble. Some had collapsed from the edges only, giving them a pyramid-like appearance. Others fell only where there was no beam to support them underneath, so that the balcony or overhang was now perpendicular to the ground where it was once horizontal. Other buildings had all four outer walls intact, while the “innards” of the building had collapsed in on itself, and all the contents within the structure – beds, rebar, wires, desks – were now thrown together in a salad of demolition. Sometimes it was the complete opposite, where the center of the structure had collapsed, yet the side walls remained, making them look like a giant, concrete “V”.

Many were completely obliterated, as though some cosmic foot had stepped on them and left them in a giant pile of rubble, like they were nothing more than over-sized sandcastles; while some of the larger, multi-story buildings had collapsed into neat stacks of pancakes, with a thin sprinkling of dust and rubble surrounding the perimeter of the separate floors like excess jelly seeping out of a PB&J sandwich. Still other buildings were both half-standing, and half-destroyed, like condemned buildings that had been sentenced to the wrecking ball, with their ruined walls and roof spilling into the middle of the street and obstructing traffic. Even where there were no buildings, a thick line of rubble and rebar lined the street, creating a snow drift of concrete and steel that had been plowed to the sides. Likewise, entire walls were flattened, lying on their sides though still intact save the top row of cinderblocks which were shattered and sprayed into the street, making them look like someone had just pushed them over completely with only minimal effort. Needless to say, the entire area looked as if it was in the midst of a complete and total demolition, and the Presidential Palace as though it had been brought to its knees.

As we made our way out of the capital, we passed a large market where life seemed to be carrying on as usual – as usual as it could amidst the vast destruction. It was filled and jostling with people walking and shopping alongside the crowded sidewalks, where women sat beside piles of fresh cabbage and fruits and sacks of grain, selling whatever goods they had as pigs ate what had been left from the day before or scrummaged through other piles of smoldering trash. Interestingly, the corrugated metal shanties that lined the eastern end of the market –- on the outskirts of Cité Soleil, home to some of Haiti’s poorest, or “the biggest slum in a city of slums,” as this journalist noted -– seemed to have faired somewhat better in the quake than the larger concrete structures, which may have been the result of a “better” ability to move and sway as the earth shook. Nonetheless, one expert with the Haitian government involved in assessing the damage estimated in the Wall Street Journal that “as much as 75% of [Port-au-Prince's] combined commercial and residential structures will eventually have to be torn down.” And that’s just in Port-au-Prince; we hadn’t even arrived to Carrefour, which was still closer to the earthquake’s epicenter.

Farther along, we passed more Tent Cities. (As of the Feb. 19, UN/OCHA SITREP #22, they estimated that “there are 331 spontaneous sites hosting 110,259 families (562,866 individuals)” .) The term “Tent City,” however, is a bit of a misnomer itself, as the tents are little more than whatever cloth big enough to create a barrier could be found: bed sheets, blankets, table cloths, rugs, tarps and even flags were strung up and pinned to sticks or poles or rebar which had been pulled from the concrete that once constituted the walls of their homes. “Refugee Camp” would be a more suitable term as these people have been run from their homes and have no set date to return, if they even have a home left to return to. (Here is the link to a GoogleEarth download of all IDP sites as of Feb. 4, 2010.)

Tents, camps and people were everywhere. Many sat in front of what used to be their homes, but were now little more than non-descript piles of rubble, selling food and other goods as they would be if their house were still standing. Oftentimes, you’d see people rummaging through the rubble, trying to salvage whatever they could, or breaking apart a piece of wall which still had the potential – and likelihood – of falling apart and causing more injury.

After passing a center divide which had become the site for a long, single-file row of tents between two main roads, we came to the coast, where you could see a number of naval ships, Coast Guard Cutters and other vessels including the USNS Comfort, a naval hospital ship that has a 1,000-bed capacity with 12 fully-equipped ORs. We also drove past the oil refinery, and you could see where the long pipeline had collapsed as it stretched out into the sea.

But no matter what we passed, and how creative the different forms of destruction seemed to be, there were two common realities: the destruction and the dust. It was a unique type of dust though, not comprised of only the kicked-up dirt from the trodden ground and pock-marked streets, but also from the ashes of burning trash piles, and from the rubble of collapsed buildings. The rubble is probably the biggest contributor to this dust and it created a thick white film that layered everything, as though someone had taken all the schoolhouse erasers in the world and beaten them together at once over all the city.

And still, the people carried on as though it was just another day – which, in the end, it was.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Read More:

Haiti Earthquake Project – Home
Day 1: Travel – San Diego to Haiti
Day 2: Port-au-Prince to Carrefour
Day 2: Grace International Orphanage & Tent City
Day 2: Medical Clinic at Grace Int’l
Day 2: “The Transport from Haiti”
Day 3: Carrefour – Boys’ Home Clinic (updates soon)
Day 4: UN/PROMESS Trip 1; Medical Teams International (updates soon)
Day 5: UN/PROMESS Trip 2 (updates soon)
Day 6: Boys’ Home Clinic: Freelance Relief Workers (updates soon)