Day 5 - the way back

By Day 5, our "team" had dwindled down to only Eduardo and myself. We started the drive early like we always do, but did take some time to stop at interesting sights along the way to Santiago. Right near PaP, we came across not one, but two abandoned housing developments which did not have any damage which we could see from the car. Sure, they were located a bit out of the public transportation range, but maybe they could place a hospital, or NGO staff with transportation here!

Day 4 - Hospital and Petionville

Day 4 was very rewarding. We returned to the small private hospital, and examined their newest building in details, which we found to be in great condition. After that, we drove to the hills of Petionville where the rich live to see the damage in this part of town. Unfortunately, we were not allowed into the rubble of Hotel Montana (used to be the fanciest hotel in PaP, was always full of foreigners) by the US military, and instead looked at very fancy, but pancaked homes. Similar to other crowded cities, the rich live in the hills where the views are nicer and the breeze is stronger. The interesting part in PaP is that the lower parts of the hills are covered in poor people's homes, then a buffer of green, and then come the expensive homes. Even in geographical location, there is a big divide between the rich and the poor!

In the heart of Petionville, we saw our first stores. In the past 3 days, we had only seen small shacks selling lottery tickets or tiny stalls on the street selling bananas, jumper cables, or avocados, but not one store! So, immediately we went into the shopping mall and spent about an hour there, no joke. Well, we spent our time admiring the lack of damage and the quality of design and construction. The owner told us that the building had been designed by an "expensive" German engineer. Good for him!

Day 3 - hospitals

On this day, we visited the General Hospital and a smaller private hospital in downtown PaP. Where about 40% of the General Hospital buildings were usable, the private hospital was using only 1 out of 9 buildings! We tracked down the location of the generators and took some photographs documenting the lack of anchorage of such important equipment. In a town where 3 hours of power a day is the norm, it was sad to see the lack of common sense. When I approached the maintenance guy about it, he told me that the "company delivered and left it this way."

At the private hospital, we got to spend a bit more time and took part in a small engineering experiment, involving a very heavy piece of equipment (generator), a truck with a very high bed, 15 brains who all spoke at once, and two guys who just pushed the generator out of the truck.

Day 2 - Cemex and downtown

On February 16, we visited two Cemex cement plants in Port-au-Prince, learned a lot about the construction business in Haiti, and while traveling from one plant to the other by boat (otherwise it would've been a 2 hour drive), we got a close look at the damage at the public pier. After the cement plants, we finally went to downtown PaP and saw the devastation. We recorded in detail the damage in 4 blocks there. I only recall seeing about 1 building per block still standing. We also visited the Cathedral which had completely collapsed.

There and back again

Above you can see the route we took from Santiago to Port-au-Prince to Saint Marc and back. Besides marking our route with the gps, we also marked the location of most of the photos we took. This is a great change from having to carry a clipboard and try to mark the location of each photo.

Back in the US

Just a quick post to let you know that Eduardo and I just arrived at SFO. The rest of the team should be back in a few hours, as well.

Tomorrow I will try to post more pictures and reflections on what we saw.

Finally in Haiti

Greetings from Haiti. We got on the road very early today and made it to Port-au-Prince in about 9 hours. About two of those spent on PaP traffic. There are pedestrians, trucks, mopeds, lots of NGO SUVs on the road. What lacks a lot of the time is the asphalt! The Kia has been having a tough day.

The border crossing at Jimani was much simpler than we expected. Even though we had the mayor's direct phone number, we didn't need his help to get admitted to Haiti. We were actually the only people asking for permission to cross and stamps in our passports. The locals were just going back and forth with tons of supplies on their backs.

We started seeing damage pretty soon after crossing the border. After a few photo stops we arrived at the PaP airport which is where most of the UN teams are based. We hear that sleeping at an airport is not pleasant.

At the airport we met with some Italian GIS guys from the UN. They showed us their work with using satellite imagery to detect damaged buildings. I can tell you that those maps were full of red dots!