This is a Cry for Help from Haiti

One minute he was standing there, and the next he was pinned under the wall of his house, an avalanche of concrete and dust covering him. His sister had been just outside in the yard and in the first moments after the earthquake, she called his name and tried to find someone to help her dig through the rubble. Too weak to move the bigger pieces of her broken house, she walked through the debris calling out her brother’s name until almost an hour later, when she heard him faintly calling back to her. When he tells the story, his voice is weak from the injury to his neck as he shows the gash on the back of his head, the place where his arm was crushed.

It has been four long, rainy weeks since a 7.2 earthquake devastated small towns and remote communities throughout Haiti’s southwest. Just as they had been after the earthquake on January 12, 2010, Haitians were their own first responders in the days after the August 14 quake. Communities worked together to dig people out from under the rubble, to identify those who had been lost. By the end of the first week, teams of Haitians from across the country were in the southwest bringing much needed medical support and other critical items.

At the same time, the international community and NGOs based both within and outside the earthquake affected zones also sprang into action, sending out appeals and organizing to bring aid to those most in need. Millions of dollars began to flow from donors and the Haitian diaspora in hopes of avoiding the mistakes made eleven years ago, and ensuring rapid support to hundreds of thousands of Haitians sleeping out in the open during the rainy season.

So why are so many Haitians still waiting for the first signs of help one month after the earthquake?

Members of the Haiti Response Coalition were among those who began to act and plan immediately when news of the earthquake broke. The first instinct is to rush in, bring support, help however you can. But after living with the lessons learned from 2010 for the last decade, we also realized that the most important first step was to assemble a small, trustworthy, and experienced team who could be our eyes and ears in the most affected areas. On August 15, we  began to visit towns and villages in Nippes, the South and Grande Anse. Based on information gathered through our network of contacts, Coalition teams walked to reach communities that no others had contacted

In her neighborhood of Maniche, it seems as though every single house fell during the earthquake on August 14. Her own house collapsed on itself, the first floor completely crushed by the second floor, and now the roof of the house is at a precarious angle. She can still climb into the rooms that are now at ground level at the end of the house where the roof is highest, and even though there are still aftershocks, she does this sometimes to get out of the rain. 

One month in, the biggest challenge for earthquake response is getting aid to the people who need it most where they live. Unlike 2010, when the quake hit the highly accessible capital area, the most affected communities in Haiti’s southwest are isolated and difficult to reach. Despite there being only a few large roadways in the area, there are hundreds of small communities scattered through the mountains and along the long coast from the South to Nippes.

As the weeks have passed since the earthquake, many people have made the journey from their homes to the edges of the main highways throughout the South and Grande Anse, and they have set up informal camps and settlements. Unable to access any aid or even have their cry for help heard from where they live, these families felt they had no other choice than to move into a camp to make their needs visible to aid convoys that pass along these roads to the centralized coordination happening in the cities of Jeremie and Les Cayes.

During a recent evaluation of what they had seen, the Coalition team raised serious concerns that people could begin dying soon because they don’t have food or clean water to drink. In the village of Bawo, the only medical care available was homeopathic and herbal remedies offered by the local traditional doctor, raising concerns that serious infections and other complications could lead to more deaths and permanent injuries as more time passes without adequate treatment. Patients there were asking for pain medication as they had been suffering the torture of their injuries with nothing to numb the pain for nearly four weeks.

“The biggest problem is that aid isn’t arriving where people really need it,” explained local Director of Mobilization Job Joseph. “As long as the help is only available in the urban centers, people will be forced to leave their homes to come seeking aid.” Centralizing the distribution of aid was one of the biggest failures in the 2010 earthquake response, and it led to the proliferation of tent camps, some of which astonishingly still exist today, 11 years later. We are already seeing the camps along the national highways, signaling that people know they will not get help at home.

Whether they are sheltering inside damaged buildings in danger of further collapse, or trying to stay dry during torrential downpours with nothing but sheets in makeshift camps, Haiti’s earthquake survivors need more support and better aid right now. In the village of Tibi, a communal section of Camp Perrin, the Coalition team was the first to visit and document the destruction of at least 80% of the homes. When our team returned more than a week later, one of the families they had met previously began to cry upon seeing them, saying they were the only people who had come to see them still. With tears in his eyes, our team leader talked about the anguish he felt on having returned to Tibi with nothing to give yet. 

There is no time to waste, and we are the ones who must do better this time. Haitians have been responding to the earthquake on the ground in the most affected areas since the shaking stopped on August 14th. By using a Haitian-led, participatory approach, we can move quickly to provide rights-based solidarity and support.

Haiti Response Coalition teams will continue visiting hard to reach communities to perform rapid assessments. Based on these visits, we will then work with community leaders to link them to the resources they desperately need. This includes direct cash transfers to support families needing basic food and other items, locally-sourced temporary shelters, repairs to water systems damaged by the quake, and support to damaged schools to help them prepare to resume classes. At the same time, we will work to amplify the voices of Haitians who were affected by this tragedy while monitoring and evaluating the coordination and delivery of aid. The Coalition will draw upon the vast experience in our network to lift up Haitian solutions and leadership at this time, while advocating for transparency and accountability for all funds raised in the name of the Haitian people.

She had just stepped out of her house in Marceline to make coffee when the earthquake came with a physical shock and the sound of concrete and rocks crashing all around her. She turned around to see the house reduced to a pile of rubble with her mother inside and immediately she began to scream and call out, begging anyone and everyone to come and help her dig her mother out of the debris. Moments later, she began to panic as she realized her son was not there and she couldn’t see him anywhere. As she shrieked his name, a family member came to tell her that he was lost under the rubble. He was 15 years old, all his supplies and uniform ready to start school. She is inconsolable now, living in a small room made of tarps and sticks, nowhere she can look without seeing debris and being reminded of everything she lost when the ground was shaking.