Essay on Haiti Earthquake 2010: Global Agencies Respond to Devastating Natural Disaster

Introduction

In January 2010, one of the worst earthquakes ever recorded in modern history hit the Caribbean nation of Haiti, resulting in the death of approximately 230,000 people and leaving more than one million people homeless (Bilham, 2010). Some of the world’s leading natural disaster agencies such as the Red Cross, United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC), UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Organization for Migration (IOM) and even the UN Development Program (UNDP) were just a fraction of the bodies and organization that responded to the disaster. Haiti moved from being just another Caribbean island destination to a hotbed of activity for disaster management organization. In the end, they managed to achieve some measure of success and an almost equal amount of failure in their disaster management practices. Disaster management takes place in four phases, which are mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Therefore, this is an evaluation of best practices in the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, and provide recommendations for improving each of the four phases of disaster management.

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Essential Humanitarian Support

The provision of essential humanitarian support was largely a success because they managed to meet most of their targets across all sectors within the first six months. According to Patrick (2011), the short term targets of providing essential humanitarian support to at least 1.2 million people affected by the earthquake were exceeded in some sectors and extensively achieved by many others. Within the first six months, the emergency bodies were able to achieve giving 1.2 million people access to safe drinking water daily, 1.5 million got emergency shelter materials, 2.1 million household non-food item kits got distributed, installation of 11,000 latrines, and 90 percent of the displaced people in the capital got access to nearby clinics (Patrick, 2011). That is a significant success by any measure because they not only met and exceeded their targets, they prevented millions of people from succumbing to the after-effects such as starvation and health complications that would have followed the earthquake.

Emergency Planning

The management was in a bad economic state for proper emergency planning, which would have reduced the impact or consequences of the earthquake. The country was suffering from particular vulnerabilities, mainly political and economic situations, that left them very exposed to the effects of the disaster (Margesson and Taft-Morales, 2010). According to Margesson and Taft-Morales (2010), plagued by political instability and natural disasters, Haiti was one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere with more than a dollar a day. Haiti had lacked the financial capacity to prepare for such a disaster and fund its central emergency response organizations.

The country’s built environment was in a dire state and not prepared to handle such an earthquake. According to Billham (2010), the buildings in Haiti were doomed to fail as evidenced by their brittle steel, course non-angular aggregate, weak cement mixed with dirty and salty sand, and widespread termination of steel reinforcement rods and joints between columns and floors of the building where the stress from the earthquake is most potent. Such failures in the structural integrity of buildings are partly due to the economic condition of the country, but the main culprit is the lack of functional regulatory bodies that can ensure proper adherence to building codes. That shows a lack of emergency planning from the government bodies because they allowed the construction of buildings with low structural integrity in a region that is prone to earthquakes. The buildings and other infrastructure were a disaster away from collapse due to their weak support systems.

Furthermore, the city designers did not plan the city in a way that can minimize the damage of such a disaster and facilitate emergency operations. Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, was a city designed to support 100,000 inhabitants, but at the time of the earthquake, it was home to a population of over 2 million people (Cohen, 2011). Meaning most of the services were already strained way beyond their capacity, and the earthquake only exposed such weaknesses. The city planning did not adhere to the standards for habitable human environments and instead allowed structures to be congested in specific areas without regard for human safety and disaster planning. Most of the city was inaccessible because of the blockage and destruction of the paths and infrastructures built to connect these areas. There was little regard for emergency planning in the design of the city.

Risk Assessment

There was no proper risk assessment done before the occurrence of the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti. It is possible to address emergency planning when one gets involved in identifying risk factors available in a particular geographical location (Kagayema, 2017). The nation sits right where the North American plate meets the Caribbean plate. Its capital city Port-au-Prince sits on top of one of the fault lines, which made it the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake. Risk assessment needs to be conducted to ensure proper emergency planning. According to Bilham (2010), Seismologists had written and spoken extensively about the probability of a damaging earthquake occurring in that part of the Caribbean plate boundary. The country might have been better prepared for the earthquake through proper planning and infrastructure had the risk assessment been performed.

They were was also no risk assessment of the country’s preparedness to deal with an emergency. According to Cohen (2011), Haiti had been dependent on assistance from non-governmental organizations due to the extreme poverty in the country. The need for integration of disaster assistance and on-going economic and social assistance into its development of a more resilient society complicated its recovery. Both the Haitian government and the international emergency response organizations associated by the UN failed to assess the economic risk factors in the country in preparation for such a disaster. Most of the available economic evaluation before the earthquake were not dealing with emergency preparedness. The national, as well as local governments were not empowered in disaster preparedness and response.

Clarity of Roles

There was insufficient clarity of roles for the numerous humanitarian organizations on the ground that had responded to the disaster. According to Weisenfeld (2011), coordination systems and procedures codify relative roles and responsibilities of various agencies in the situation where a significant urge in needed hence enabling smoother response. Defining the role of individual agencies and their personnel enables them to focus their energy on responding to the most critical and urgent needs in the field. The 2010 Haiti Earthquake had several agencies involved without coordination of systems and procedures. That led to confusion where some areas where overstaffed, and other sectors were either neglected and understaffed. Most of the focus went to Port-au-Prince, which was the city with the highest population in the country. However, while Port-au-Prince was the most severely affected region, there were more people in the rural side of the country that were also in need of humanitarian aid, and these people would find themselves neglected because most of the efforts had been concentrated in the capital city.

Management of Expectations

The emergency response is still considered a failure because of the failure to manage expectations despite a significant amount of resources and aid being poured into the emergency response to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. After the earthquake, the international rapidly evolved from emergency relief to aid for early recovery and reconstruction. (Binder, 2013). According to Binder (2013), the paradigm shift corresponded to changing priorities where urgency moved from meeting the needs of Haitians to working on improving the conditions to address the needs of tomorrow through rebuilding the country, strengthening governance, and democracy. The earthquake was viewed as a once in a century opportunity to rebuild the country. Slogans such as “Build back better” failed to match the results that the Haitian people were expecting. As a result, the response ended up being viewed as a failure because many of the international actors made unachievable promises. The “build back better” slogan, which was coined by Bill Clinton in a country plagued by natural disasters, historical injustices, unfair trade regulations, social unrest, and bad governance, was one of the reasons for the asymmetry between outcome and expectations. In the end, the management of the 2010 Haiti earthquake failed to manage expectations and ended up promising too much.

Methods for Improving Each of the Four Phases of Disaster Management

Mitigation

Mitigation refers to the actions taken to reduce the impact and consequences of a natural disaster or prevent them altogether. It consists of actions such as taking insurance cover for health and property or building infrastructure that can sustain natural disasters. In the case of Haiti, it is located in a region prone to earthquakes. One method of improving the mitigation phase of disaster management in Haiti is by building resilient infrastructure. Parts of the world, such as Japan, which experience almost similar challenges, have been able to build infrastructure that can withstand high magnitude earthquakes (Henriques, 2019). The infrastructural preparedness was one of the failures in the mitigation phase. The quality of the infrastructure was already too poor and a disaster away from collapse.

Another method is to get insurance cover for the population and their property. Since the country is in a region riddled with natural disasters, the people should have health, life, and property insurance that can reduce the impact of the natural disaster, at least on a financial basis.

Preparedness

It is the second phase of disaster management where the society plans for those effects which cannot be mitigated. It mostly includes planning, training, and educational activities. In the context of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, one of the methods that the country can use to prepare for the next emergency is by adequately funding their emergency response team to ensure they have the necessary training and equipment to respond to such kinds of disasters. First responders such as firefighters, ambulance teams, and even law enforcement need to be always armed and ready to respond to such incidents. Also, the country needs a fully functional emergency response organization that can respond to natural disasters. Such an organization needs all the necessary skills and tools to save as many lives as possible.

The people should also be educated on proper emergency procedures in the event of such a disaster. Most of the earthquake deaths came from those who were either inside buildings or close to such infrastructure. Schools and other training institutions should be given procedures and instructions to follow in case of an earthquake or a natural disaster. Learning institutions should conduct drills that aim to prepare students for such an emergency to minimize the loss lives.