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!

Carnival in Santiago

It´s been a long day... We woke up at 4:30 am in Jamaica, New Jersey, and returned to JFK airport to board our flight to Santiago. Once we arrived at the terminal in Santiago, we were greeted by a airport employee and escorted to the VIP room (flat screen tv, juice, comfortable couches, marble bathroom) while they chased after our luggage! As for passport check, THEY came to us... After all the stamps were stamped and bags were claimed, we got our rental car. If you are coming out this way, don't believe expedia if they tell you they reserved a car for you, they may just turn around and give it to someone else! Coincidentally, Europcar employee's "friend" at Savings car rental just happened to have a car for us. So now we are driving around in a green Toyota (gasp!) Highlander. It has 4-wheel drive, in case we have to tow around Chris and Carlos´Kia...
About 5 miles outside of the airport we arrived at our hotel and met up with Carlos and Chris. Later in the afternoon, Eduardo´s friend Victor (the reason we were such VIPs at the airport), who also happens to be the president of the Earthquake Engineering Institute of the Dominican Republic, Vitelmo Bertero, met us and told us all he knew about the road conditions to Haiti. We are now printing out map according to his instructions. We cannot waste any time getting lost tomorrow! He has convinced us to drive 1.5 hours south to Santo Domingo and then take the highway from there to the border. The drive should take about 8 hours, putting us in Haiti early in the afternoon.

After all of the business talk, Victor took us into town to show off the carnival festivities. Santiago takes their Carnival seriously and unlike other towns, celebrates it on every Sunday of February, instead of just one. There were a lot of crazy costumes (lechon?), lots of confetti, whips, and small balloons to spank each other with. Oh, and of course, plenty of Presidente beers and cuba libre stands. We were expecting a quiet boring town on a Sunday night, instead we walked into a party.

The guidebooks say that Haiti celebrates similar Carnival, but they probably will not be celebrating it this year. It is very interesting to see how life just goes on, 8 hours of driving away.

At the airport

Eduardo, veronica, and I are at SFO, Santiago-bound. Some say we are
taking the long was to Haiti, going via DR and all, but the Miami
flight ahead of us (American has Miami-Port au Prince connections) has
a 7 hour delay! And it's full of grumpy and tired kids.

Thirsty much?

>
> Carlos and Chris have started supply shopping in Puerto Plata, DR.
> They report that the Kia is riding low!
> We better recycle.

Maps!

I have been printing maps from the openstreetmap. Unfortunately, I did not see a way to upload these maps to my iphone, and I do not have a gps unit, but I believe that old fashioned paper printouts will be plenty helpful while trying to navigate the streets of Port-au-Prince.

These maps were "created the previous hurricane season where people around the world drew roads and buildings. Incomplete at the time, the newly scanned historic map provided and additional source of information in which to continue digitizing roads, bridges, cities, and hospitals."
You can read more about it here.

Curiously, one road I did find missing on these maps was a straight line from Santiago to Port-au-Prince. I hope that there is a road, even if not a straight line.

Reading material

Here are a few links I found to be relevant and informative for reconnaissance and reconstruction in Haiti.

First of all, the Earthquake Clearinghouse:
http://www.eqclearinghouse.org/20100112-haiti/
This is a site where members of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute who have any information about the earthquake in Haiti submit their photos and reports. Updated daily and very informative.

Handbook for Reconstruction After Natural Disasters
http://www.housingreconstruction.org/housing/toc
by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, a partnership of many countries (European and US), UN, and teh World Bank.

Bonjou!

Welcome to our first blog post. On Saturday, we will start our long journey to Haiti. We have set up this blog to share information and hopefully photos with our colleagues, family, and friends. Check back often, but don't get too worried if the blog doesn't get updated very often. We will be very lucky to have power and wifi while in Haiti.