The Destruction of Haiti

By Scot Facer Proctor

Published in Meridian Magazine

Photography by Scot Facer Proctor

Editors’ Note:  Meridian’s Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Maurine and Scot Proctor, are still serving in Haiti, gathering stories and meeting with members of the Church throughout the hardest hit areas of the island.  In this essay Scot takes us to some of the old part of the city in Port-au-Prince where destruction was no respecter of buildings or people.  Untold thousands of bodies are still buried in the massive rubble of concrete and twisted rebar.
 

There is a curfew in Port-au-Prince right now of 6:00 PM.  It is for our safety.  I wanted to take you to the heart of the destruction in the city and capture it in the evening light.  We broke curfew by nearly an hour to capture the last few pictures, but I wanted to show you a little of what happens to the city at night.

Shooting from inside of our vehicle I was able to just barely capture the ironically labeled sign:  Bienvenue a Port-au-Prince—Welcome to Port-au-Prince.

Many of the Haitians don’t want their pictures taken in the midst of the destruction, like this young man.  I have deep respect for these people, many of whom tarry around their homes where loved ones are still buried beneath tons of concrete.

In many cases whole blocks were completely destroyed, leveled to piles of rubble.  What has surprised me as we have met with the Haitian people is their resilience and willingness to pick up and carry on in the midst of this massive destruction.

This six-story building collapsed one floor intact upon the next floor and flattened into a heap.

Notice the curtains that are hanging out where the windows used to be.  Many people were trapped in this building.

The Presidential Palace was said by some to be the only building in Haiti that could withstand a major earthquake.  It, too, was essentially destroyed.

Detail of the destruction of the Presidential Palace is shown here.  The seat of government of Haiti is now located in an old police station.

The Justice Palace was also leveled by the quake on January 12.  This building is located just around the corner from the Presidential Palace.

The mixture of the stench of death and the fine dust that constantly mixes in the air causes many to walk through the city with masks.

Some buildings remained somewhat intact but just fell off their foundations.  Untold billions of dollars of damage has been done.  I asked one proprietor if he had insurance, he gave a deep and sad chuckle and said, “Unheard of.”

Because of the collapse of numerous buildings, some streets are narrowed to one lane or blocked altogether.  There is no electricity in any part of the city (without a generator) and the water system, however inadequate it was before, is completely destroyed.

Evening was approaching fast and our driver was anxious to keep us going fairly quickly through this downtown area of Port-au-Prince.  No one has counted the number of buildings destroyed by the earthquake and the more-than 63 aftershocks.  Surely it numbers in the hundreds of thousands of structures completely decimated.  The majority of the members of the Church in Haiti are now without homes or adequate shelter.

The streets do not become quiet as evening falls.  More and more people come out to socialize and to get away from the buildings, sleeping in side streets, open areas and parks.  More than a million people have been displaced.  Some estimate that number throughout the country to be closer to three million.

Some buildings are just barely hanging on by the edge of a pillar or a few pieces of smooth rebar.  The whole downtown area is very dangerous to traverse.

Some of the bodies that were trapped or not removed for some weeks (as this one) were finally burned to try to cut down on the unbearable smell.  Many bodies are still in the streets and are visible in the rubble, although the government has tried to make a great effort to bury as many bodies as they can as quickly as possible.  Nearly half the police force of Port-au-Prince were killed in the quake.

One of the problems with many of these buildings is that they were built with smooth steel rebar—no ridges on the rebar at all—so that when this kind of shaking occurs, the concrete just slips right away from the rebar and crashes to the earth.

Billions of tons of rubble lie in the streets of Port-au-Prince and throughout Haiti.  How long will it take to clean up from this disaster?

Personal items are strewn throughout the streets.  Some people walk along scavenging various items and then try to resell or reuse them elsewhere.

Heavy equipment is at a premium in Haiti.  Seeing one of these machines is a real rare site.  A thousand brand-new machines like this one would barely scratch the surface of the problems that face Haiti now—just in clean up alone.

Numerous buildings completely collapsed, killing all within them, or all but a few.

People in Haiti are more resilient than you would think.  One brother told us that Haitians are used to disappointment and so they have to try to be happy.  These people here have set up little shops, selling what little they can find, gathering a few cents here and a few cents there, then they try to buy what scarce food is available.

Structures from the 19th and early 20th century (as well as nearly all from the 18th century) were toppled and destroyed in downtown Port-au-Prince.

Many men work amongst the rubble to find scraps of steel and metal to try to sell or use in fabrication of other useful items.

Thousands of piles of broken furniture and junk have been piled everywhere.  The cleanup process is almost unfathomable.

These carts are common in Haiti, with one man able to pull along hundreds of pounds of material.

Smoke and fine dust fills the evening air and a near-constant breeze, mixed with daily temperatures in the 80’s (Fahrenheit) makes this area a health hazard for breathing.

Power lines are downed all over the city with some of them covering one entire lane of traffic, narrowing the roads in many areas.  Because the power grid was destroyed, most of the lines are not live, but one can never trust that assumption.

Some people just sit and stare and wonder what they can possible do with their lives now.  Unemployment has soared in most areas to 80 percent.  When asked what people are planning to do with their future, almost all just shrug their shoulders and say, “I just don’t know.  I have no idea whatsoever.”

The “Tap-Tap” is the common mode of travel in Port-au-Prince, a pick-up truck with a small shell.  Turning around in the downtown can be very tricky.  Most people will  not stand or park by any building for too long for fear that it could completely topple any minute.

Here the destruction cut off the street altogether except for a small place for pedestrian traffic.

Here a many tries of find unbroken cinder blocks he cobbles from a destroyed building.  Perhaps he will try to rebuild his home.  There are almost no Haitians who will go into their homes by night for fear of being crushed in another aftershock.

Side streets are packed with people and trash.

Scenes like this are common throughout Haiti.  Note the saying written on wheelbarrow.  People here turn to Jesus all the time.  Cries for Him were heard throughout the land on January 12, 2010.

The smoke in early evening begins to fill the air and more and more people come from everywhere into the streets.

When we had planned to come down here a couple of weeks ago, I talked to my brother about how they could begin to deal with collapsed concrete buildings.  He said that the only way you can clean them up is with heavy equipment.  I whole-heartedly agreed.

As I have observed now hundreds of times, many of these buildings are being torn apart with two or three men using a sledge hammer, a hack saw and a bucket.  I was wrong about the heavy equipment.

Extremely hard-working men break the concrete apart, piece-by-piece, then cart it off in a five-gallon bucket.  Their average pay:  $2.00/day/person.

Trash is piled up in the streets, like this, everywhere.  The sanitation system in Haiti has never been good but now it is compounded a thousand fold by the apocalyptic destruction.

People collect everything they can, like pieces of cardboard, to use for making fires to boil some water to make what little rice they can find.  Food is in great shortage here and people are very hungry.

The burning trash piles create an environmental nightmare throughout the nation.

This cathedral, one of the great landmarks of Port-au-Prince was also essentially destroyed.

Ironically the Notre Dame Catholic Cathedral with its two domed towers on its west face was one of the first in the world to be built from reinforced concrete.  It didn’t survive the quake.

Many people mourn the loss of this church.

As night falls upon the city, the streets become more and more dangerous.

Large intersections in the city’s upper streets become campgrounds for hundreds of people every night.  People are homeless and are terrified of further aftershocks.  We had to drive over some of the blankets to get through here—many people were upset by this.

The youth are out very late finding scrap metal and gathering things to sell.  At this point, it was time to head home.