By David Clodomir
Let’s apply some perspective. Imagine for a moment that Maryland was hit with an earthquake that registered 7.2 on the Richter scale. Also imagine that Maryland was not one of 50 states in a super-power nation with a strong infrastructure and support resources, but a nation unto itself; one of the poorest in the world with a weak infrastructure and virtually no support resources…and the city of Baltimore was just leveled. At 4:53pm EST on Tuesday January 12th 2010, in Haiti which is roughly the same size as the state of Maryland, this is exactly what came to pass.
With more than 20 subsequent after-shocks reaching up to 5.9 on the Richter scale (small earthquakes themselves), a magnitude 7 quake struck the island nation, laying waste to much of the capital city of Port-Au-Prince and the surrounding area. Not long after the disaster struck, the Internet was flooded with reports and images of bodies lining the streets where concrete buildings once stood. The devastation truly started to hit home for many across the world when the first images of the Haitian National Palace were released. An historic landmark built in 1918, known for its beautiful French Renaissance architecture, was now for all intents and purposes destroyed.
How this happened, is something that geologists have actually been talking about for years now. In March of 2008, scientists presented findings at a conference stating that the fault line located on the southern side of the country posed “a serious seismic hazard.” What they referred to was the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system – a strike slip fault line that consists of two tectonic plates running east to west through Haiti. What caused the quake was a horizontal shifting of the plates that has been described by Michael Blanpeid, associate coordinator for the Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program as “sheering the island, crushing it, grinding it.”
The major blow stemmed from the fact that the earthquake took place only 6.2 miles beneath the surface, which causes more severe ground tremors than deeper quakes. This, along with the conditions of the buildings constructed above, Blanpeid said, contributed to the severity of the devastation.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York to Haitian parents, my mother from Hinche, and father Port-Au-Prince. Though an American citizen by status and cultural osmosis, I consider myself Haitian by breeding and blood. Yet it took a bit for the impact of this tragedy to really settle in. I didn’t want to believe that somewhere on this planet; there was a group of people to whom I felt so closely tied, suffering in this way.
But denial quickly gave way to reality as I started to speak to family and friends. As of this writing, one such friend is still looking for his father. My mom has yet to hear from one of her good friends who recently traveled to the Haitian capital. Most of my Dad’s and some of my step-mother’s family is from the region that was struck the hardest and we’re all still waiting to hear some good news. While there aren’t official death counts yet, I’ve got one friend who is already aware of the fact that she lost two family members, and is waiting to hear about two more. Unfortunately, the waiting game is inexorably tied to the very things that made this such a major disaster for Haiti – poverty and poor infrastructure.
Haiti is the poorest island in the western hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. The CIA World Fact Book estimates that more than 80% of the Haitian population of 9 million is living below the poverty line. Approximately 2 million of that number reside in Port-Au-Prince (remember, the entire country is only the size of Maryland) where sub-standard construction paved the way to the destruction of much of the shoddy infrastructure, including hospital buildings, running water supplies, the DigiCel tower, land-line cabling, and more. Many can’t get to phones, and if they could, it isn’t likely that they’d function. Many others are just trying to locate healthcare or drinking water for themselves or loved ones. In addition, the country must also now contend with the fact that the main prison in Port-Au-Prince which housed over 3000 collapsed, with many of the inmates believed to have escaped.
At 4:53pm EST on Tuesday January 12th, 2010 the island nation of Haiti changed forever. The weakest is now fragile than ever before, and has had laid upon it an additional brand of suffering almost impossible to imagine. Never in recent history has it been more important for us to come together as a world body to hear the voices of people who have been crying out for so long, not just in Haiti, but everywhere. So indeed on January 12th, Haiti changed forever, but maybe…and hopefully, the silver lining in this darkest of clouds is that the world changed a little along with it. Just maybe!
If you are one of those individuals trying to locate a missing loved one, you can visit the message board located on this site http://www.koneksyon.com/, or CNN’s iReport site, http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=381628&start=12, where you’ll be able to upload their photo and post relevant information.
If would like to help the victims of this tragic disaster, please visit the following site where you’ll find a comprehensive listing of reputable charitable organizations providing emergency relief: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/impact/. And please do be on the lookout for scams!