By Natalie Taggart | Communications
Six weeks after the earthquake struck, David Humphries, Communications Manager for CHF International, is in Haiti. He will be producing daily blogs of the situation on the ground.
Port au Prince has changed since I visited last November. The hotel where I stayed has been obliterated. The shop where I bought food and water is now a pile of concrete. Colleagues’ houses where I enjoyed dinner are now pancaked.
Driving from the chaotic and crowded airport, internally displaced person camps are immediately evident. Large numbers of white tents — from relief efforts — are visible, but something else was visible — dark clouds.
In November the sun shone every day, but today the clouds are a sign of something to come.
Within a few hours, as darkness fell, torrential rain struck, like nothing I have seen in Europe or the US. In just twenty minutes the tropical rain had swamped roads. Of course, this was the moment when our car developed a flat tire and we had to rush for shelter while we found another vehicle. But this small inconvenience was just the briefest taste of what people living in tents were experiencing and will experience. ‘Tent cities’, whether made up of donated tents or makeshift can be seen everywhere. They are on roads, football fields, any open ground. Many families are camping in tents outside thier houses or on the side of a road; where one would expect to see a car parked, that’s where a family is living.
The rain storm was over soon and most of the rain evaporated from the roads. But this was a harbinger of what is to come. The rainy season will come soon — it begins as early as March — and is followed by the contiguous tropical storm season which lasts until November. Flooding will cause sanitation hazards and disease.
CHF is embarking on a project to produce over 5000 transitional shelters for families; building or improving temporary homes to allow Haitians to live in safe, sanitary conditions for up to several years as the major reconstruction takes place.
Looking at the rain, we all know it’s a race against time.
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