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12th July, 2010
By Darren Hanniffy, GOAL Haiti Country Director
“At precisely 5pm on January 12th, 2010, I was sitting at
my desk in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, where I was working
as the Country Director for international aid agency GOAL. We were
at the end of another working day and I was preparing a report for
our team in head office in Dublin outlining the progress that we
had made on several issues that week.
At the same time - and just a few short hours
away from my office - Haiti was being rocked by a massive earthquake.
In just 35 seconds the capital city of Port-au-Prince was almost
completely flattened. 220,000 people were dead and another 300,000
lay crushed and injured by the falling debris.
About 10 minutes after the event I received
a call from a colleague informing me that “something big”
had happened in Haiti. In less than one hour a decision was made
that GOAL should respond and just seven hours later I was making
my way by private plane to the Haitian capital.
GOAL had no presence in Haiti at the time
but within days, a 15-strong disaster response team had already
begun to establish what was to become one of the agency’s
biggest ever post-disaster operations.
Much has been written and documented about
the desperation, the smell of death, the loss and the suffering
in those initial weeks following the quake. Despite this, I found
no words were able to express the overwhelming sense of shock and
disbelief in the faces of the survivors as I walked through the
rubble-filled streets the day after the disaster. I watched loved
ones desperately digging for signs of life, others wandering aimlessly
around what was once their home or perhaps most sadly of all, the
pain and anguish in the faces of those carrying away the crushed
bodies of their family.
Six months on from the disaster and GOAL
is now firmly established in Haiti. The organisation has achieved
a lot and there is a lot more that we intend to do. To the untrained
eye, it might seem that very little has changed over the past six
months. Port-au-Prince is still lying in ruins. The vulnerability
of the people remains palpable.
So far, however, the emergency response has been a success.
Enough plastic sheeting has been distributed
to protect the hundreds of thousands of homeless people against
the rains. Food has been distributed throughout the community. For
its part, GOAL managed to feed almost 500,000 people. Clean water
is accessible for the vast majority and cash is being injected into
the community through cash to work programmes that are being used
to take away the rubble.
Most importantly - and the ultimate reason why we consider the response
to be a success thus far - there has been no major outbreak of disease.
The task now is to rebuild the city. This
is the major challenge. We must accept that it will take years.
The Haitian government’s capacity to manage the response has
been badly weakened by the earthquake that destroyed most of the
government buildings and killed many key staff that would have been
involved in managing the reconstruction. Without clear direction,
without a rebuilding policy and without leadership, the reconstruction
will be haphazard.
The international community needs to focus
on this area now and a more holistic urban planning approach needs
to be adopted if we are to maximise the opportunity that the funding
for reconstruction affords us."
© 2010 skynews.com
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