Disaster Management during Haiti Earthquake, 2010 - Research Paper Example

Disaster Management: Haiti Earthquake, Planning/ Mitigation before the disaster The 2004 publication by the United Nations Development Programme entitled Reducing Disaster Risk indicated that Haiti was among the countries with the highest disaster risk indexes globally. Over half a century before the report, the country had suffered over 40 hydro-meteorological events with a natural catastrophe striking at an average of once every two years (Benjamin et al. 2011, 311-313). Just five years before the 2010 earthquake, Hurricane Jeanne in 2004 resulted to losses representing about 7% of Haiti’s GDP with more than 3,000 people losing their lives. This event and a number of other storms and hurricanes in 2008 led the country’s parliament to put into place a Natural Catastrophe Emergency Declaration Act in recognition of Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters (GoH 2004, 4). In 1989, a sub-regional response agency known as the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) was formed (Poncelet 1997, 269-271). This agency has entered into various agreements for cooperation with other international agencies to improve its capacity for disaster mitigation and response. This agency is now known as the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and it has the mandate and responsibility of resource mobilization among the Caribbean countries to respond to disasters whenever they hit any of the member-states. Before the Earthquake, the national emergency management system was poorly prepared with plans of response and was still grappling with the effects of the recent hurricanes that had devastated parts of the country in 1998; no clear plans or mitigation measures were in place apart from sporadic efforts by NGOs. CDEMA acted as an important resource in supplementing Haiti’s emergency systems and providing response (PAHO 2010, 1-3). Despite the political situation in Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s, legal provisions were developed for disaster preparedness, including pre-disaster mitigation plans (GoH, 2004). One of the best efforts involved the creation of small teams consisting of six to seven people, known as Permanent Disaster Response Committees which were tasked with briefing key players on disaster response related issues. Before the 2010 earthquake, Haiti’s National System for Risk and Disaster Management (SNGRD) was a network made up of the government’s Department of Civic Protections (DCP), CDEMA as a regional representative, and a number of other participants, national and international (Greenhalgh, 2014). The DCP worked with the Permanent Secretariat for Management of Risks and Disasters to lead the operations of the SNGRD. The DCP was charged with the country’s disaster response efforts while the secretariat of Risk Management and Disaster played the role of coordination and management of all operations by SNGRD (GoH, 2004). With the secretariat managing both risk and disaster the country, the permanent secretary was charged with coordination of over 26 government and non-government organizations (NGOs) working in disaster preparedness and response operations in the country (Grunewald et al. 2010, 13). Before the disaster, the country’s Ministry of Interior spearheaded the formulation of policy while DPC coordinated disaster preparedness and response operations at all levels. The DPC had been dynamic in dealing with previous disasters but its main weakness was limited resources, this undermined its effectiveness in coordinating disaster mitigation and planning efforts significantly (Grunewald et al. 2010, 14-15). Description of the Disaster On Tuesday 12th of January 2010, an earthquake measuring about 7.0 on the Richter scale stuck Haiti. One of the factors that made the earthquake so devastating was its shallow depth of about 13 kilometers. The epicenter of the earthquake was at a place near Leogane, about 25 km from the country’s capital of Port au Prince. It is estimated that over 220,000 people perished in the disaster, accounting for about 2% of the country’s population. About three hundred thousand people were injured while two million people, about 20% of the country’s population became homeless. These statistics made the January 12th earthquake the 5th most deadly earthquake in recorded history of world disasters (Fierro and Perry, 2010). It is estimated by the Inter-American Development Bank that the cost of damage in the region as a consequence of the earthquake was between $8.1 and $13.9 billion (Jura, 2012). The devastating effects of the earthquake as illustrated by the high casualty figures have been attributed in part to the occurrence of the earthquake in highly urban areas. The effects have also been attributed to underlying vulnerabilities in Haiti’s disaster preparedness and response mechanisms related to the country’s poverty and weak governance institutions (Diamond 2006, 22-23). Response to the disaster provided a significant challenge which was made more difficult by considerable underlying vulnerabilities in the Haitian society including fragile governance, high levels of poverty, insecurity, and high threat of natural disasters (Kean 2012, 638). Haiti was the poorest country in the Caribbean with over half of the population living on less than USD1.5 a day before the disaster, a situation that was worsened by the aftermath of the earthquake. Before 2010, the country had experienced rapid uncontrolled urbanization over previous decades resulting to poor quality of buildings and shelter that had been further worsened by a series of natural disasters. Haiti had experienced a total of nine serious storms over the previous two decades which affected about 3.5 million people, representing a third of the country’s population, and killed over 7 thousand people (PAHO 2010, 2-3). Health Threat (Morbidity and Mortality) The 2010 earthquake in Haiti compounded an already difficult humanitarian condition for the residents of the country. By 2009, approximately 120,000 people in the country were living with HIV with 7,000 of them being children aged below 14 years. The majority of those living with AIDS were young people of between 15 and 24 years of age with the prevalence being higher for females (1.6%) than for males (0.6%). Before the earthquake, the health statistics for the country’s children revealed a high mortality rate whereby one out of thirteen infants died before the age of five while over 30% of children under the same age faced chronic malnutrition (Fraser 2010, 1813). The earthquake dramatically worsened the health conditions in the country by increasing the risk of infecting of communicable diseases, disrupting nutrition-related services and feeding practices, and consequently placing large proportions of the population including children, expectant mothers, and lactating mothers at increased risk of malnutrition and mortality (Kolbe et al. 2010, 287-288). The earthquake disrupted the entire health system in the country, including in areas not directly affected by the disaster because they depended on the capital. Health infrastructure, organization and capacity to respond to health needs, which were significantly poor before the earthquake, were worsened leaving the population highly vulnerable to communicable diseases, malaria and other severe health conditions. Although the estimation of mortality and morbidity in natural disasters is controversial and characterized by inconsistencies in the accuracy of information, the situation in Haiti after the earthquake disaster was evidently dire. Epidemiologic surveys after the earthquake estimated the mortality rate to be about 24 deaths per 1,000 in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince (Bilham 2010, 878). This mortality was mainly caused by crowding in residences, old age, and poor quality of housing. After the disaster, the mortality rate went down but the aftermath of the earthquake is still characterized by high mortality and morbidity comparative to the period before 2010 as well as in comparison to other countries in the Americas. Morbidity statistics reveal that the prevalence of underweight children under the age of five ranges between 23% and 25.2%. The proportion of birth attended by skilled health workers is reported to be about 22.1% while immunization levels are well below 30% of the children under the age of five (Kolbe et al. 2010, 290-293). Bureaucratic and Emergent Norms According to Schneider (2011, p.6-7), many disaster response operations are carried out majorly by governments with great publicity and viewed as appropriate and successful. This is not always the case because governmental response does not always operate effectively or smoothly. As illustrated by the response in Hurricane Andrew and Hurricane Katrina in the United States, public institutions face problems handling such emergency situations. In general, the overall effectiveness of governmental efforts in handling major natural disasters varies a lot depending on a number of factors including disaster preparedness structures and plans, organization, availability of resources, and capacity to respond effectively. Schneider (2011, p.7) argues that the answer to this situation lies in structure of public response systems and the nature of the disaster. In most cases government bureaucratic structures anticipate the public post-disaster human behavior to correspond to prepared plans and expectations; often this fails to happen (Diamond 2006, 47-49). While on the other hand bureaucratic norms such as public organization operation procedures, institutional processes, and policies are designed to cover every possible contingency, some disasters result to conditions characterized by unusual difficulty, complications, or stress. In such circumstances Schneider indicates that new norms emerge to give direction and new meaning to the victims of the disaster. According to Schneider (2011, p.7), when there is a large gap between pre-existing bureaucratic norms and the new emergent norms, the process of disaster management is bound to break down leading to criticism of the government and its activities. It is postulated that when there is a small gap between emergent norms and existent bureaucratic norms, the policies and structures put in place by government work properly with the government being able to address the disaster situation in a straightforward routine manner. Secondly, a medium sized gap between emergent and bureaucratic norms leads to lack of clear direction in government activities. There is poor coordination between various government agencies and actors which results into a confused pattern of governmental activity. Finally, when there is a wide gap between emerging norms and bureaucratic norms, bureaucratic structures fail to respond to human behavior and government response fails. In such a situation, establishment of intergovernmental response frameworks cannot help in administering disaster relief (Birkland 2007, 53). The 2010 earthquake in Haiti clearly illustrated the concept of gaps between bureaucratic norms and emerging norms. It is evident that based on numerous catastrophes in the past, the Haitian government as well as the regional supporting organizations had a pre-planned bureaucratic disaster response framework for the country (Schneider 2011, 6-8). Irrespective of the fact that the Haitian government was always weak and unstable before the disaster, was seriously affected by economic hardship, and significantly lacked the capacity to respond effectively to disasters, evidence suggests that it had some bureaucratic structures in place for disaster response that functioned to some extent. Haiti’s National System for Risk and Disaster Management (SNGRD) was a network made up of government departments working with other local, regional, and international agencies; this was the country’s bureaucratic disaster management structure (Lundahl 1989, 7). The SNGRD had well established systems and procedures for disaster response but when the earthquake occurred in January 2010, evidence suggests that this system failed to perform effectively. This failure can be attributed to a large gap between emerging norms and bureaucratic norms in the country. The emerging norm immediately after the disaster was characterized by a great realization among the people that the devastation caused by the disaster could have collapsed government response mechanisms and they were therefore on their own(OCHA, 2014). This situation led to people trying to help themselves in the response, first haphazardly and then in a more organized manner. When the bureaucratic system started responding, it was quite late for many victims; furthermore the response was characterized by considerable confusion. As pointed out by Schneider (2011, p.9), in such a situation, establishment of intergovernmental response frameworks could not help in administering disaster relief effectively. Response – Immediate Actions After the earthquake, the actors who would normally be relied upon to manage the disaster response were themselves affected by it. Many of the national and municipal government facilities had been destroyed and important civil servants were dead, injured or preoccupied with taking care of their own families. In particular, the National Disaster Management System, Emergency Operations Centre and most of the government facilities including hospitals and vehicles were damaged or completely destroyed (Grunewald et al. 2010, 16). The immediate response after the earthquake largely involved international agencies and governments intervening by bringing in rescue teams, medical teams, relief and other necessities (UNDP 2012, 6). Even though in the first two days after the earthquake many countries offered support and some managed to get in relief assistance, evidence suggests that the intervention by the US government served as a great obstruction to response efforts as it prioritized sending in troops and military equipment for security reasons rather than rescue operations. The inaccessibility of the national airport due to military use resulted in many planeloads of relief food, medicine, and personnel being diverted from the epicenter of the disaster in Port-au-Prince to other areas leaving rescue operations in the capital significantly handicapped. While most of the government disaster response machinery had collapsed, the operational United Nations facilities and personnel in the city were not well coordinated or actively involved in response operations as their mandate was largely security (Easterly 2006, 42). The poor state of response operations in the country and the prioritization of security issues over humanitarian response has been largely condemned all over the world and blamed for the high number of casualties in the disaster. Evidence suggests that weeks after the earthquake, victims remained trapped in ruins while most had died after awaiting rescue for days. Indeed victims were involved in rescue operations themselves without proper equipment or assistance (Bilham 2010, 879). Response – Prevention of Morbidity and Mortality As a result of the earthquake, over 50 hospitals and health centers were damaged, destroyed, or rendered unstable in the capital and surrounding areas. After the disaster, the response required for provision of mortality and morbidity was mainly left to international rescue teams from various different health and medical organizations including MSF, the Red Cross and others. Many of the disaster response organizations in the city provided emergency care first in the first three days to reduce mortality. Such care included emergency surgeries, attending to severe injuries and prioritizing pregnant women and children (Coles and Zhuang 2011, 322). Doctors were deployed in the field and field health response camps created in tents and buildings which survived the earthquake. The first efforts involved rescue of surviving victims and stabilizations of their conditions to prevent death. This was then followed by provision of medication for malaria and typhoid, treatment of drinking water and establishment of emergency sanitation facilities. Child morbidity was managed through provision of special food for infants, immunizations and prioritization of mothers and their children in allocation of tents and other facilities (Fraser 2010, 1814). Recovery – Managing the Aftermath This is the most important part of the disaster management and mitigation process after the earthquake disaster. First, it is important for the country to come up with better mitigation strategies particularly for the increasing populations in urban areas (Benjamin et al. 2011, 308). Such strategies would include better urban zoning in disaster prone urban areas, relocation of residents from high risk disaster prone areas to safer places, improvement of building codes and standards and general depopulation of the capital. The Haitian government is also supposed to implement poverty alleviation and educational programs that can help reduce vulnerability to hazards in the country. It will be important to integrate vulnerability reduction measures into national plans as well as inform the public on the importance of disaster preparedness and risk reduction (Twigg and Steiner 2002, 474). The important thing is to improve the capacity of the people to respond effectively and work well with public disaster management agencies in times of disaster (Greenhalgh, 2012). Before the disaster, the greatest majority of the victims depended on business for their livelihoods; most of the population outside of Port-au-Prince relies on farming for sustenance. One of the most important recovery and mitigation measures is to get these people back to their businesses through better government support programs that will avail loans and logistical support to small, micro, and medium sized enterprises in the country (Waugh and Steib 2006, 132). New Planning/ Mitigation Irrespective of the many challenges that Haiti faces after the earthquake in 2010, the country was presented with a good opportunity to rethink its disaster management system and plan afresh for disaster management and mitigation. After stabilization, the Haitian government can leverage some opportunities to improve its disaster response and management system (World Bank Group, 2014). After the disaster, the country has been receiving considerable amounts of international aid for recovery and reconstruction, a significant amount of that aid should go towards not only improvement of the disaster response framework and mechanisms but also towards improving the capacity of the country for disaster response. This should be accomplished by training and equipping disaster response teams, educating the population on disaster response and mitigation, and building disaster prediction and forecast facilities that can assist in planning for mitigation (Pelling and Uitto 2001, 59). One good strategy would be to strengthen the SNGRD’s capacity to coordinate disaster response and to mobilize civic and non-governmental bodies to adopt mitigation and preparedness measures. The government of Haiti would also benefit from harnessing the considerable capacity and resources of CDEMA as a regional disaster response body to help in developing better national capacity in disaster management (Young 2006, 155). CDEMA is already rich in regional and local knowledge which can be tapped in development of a better national disaster response and mitigation framework for Haiti. References Benjamin, Eliud, Bassily Austin, and Marin Melvin. “Principles and Practices of Disaster Relief: Lessons from Haiti.” Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine 78, no. 1 (2011): 306-318. Bilham, Ronald. “Lessons from the Haiti earthquake.” Nature 463, no.7283 (2010):878–879. Birkland, Thomas. After Disaster: Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Focusing Events. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2007 Coles, Joseph, Zhuang Jing. “Decisions in disaster recovery operations: a game theoretic perspective on organization cooperation.” Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 8, no.1 (2011): Article 35 Diamond, James, M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The Penguin Press: New York, 2006 Easterly, William. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and so Little Good. The Penguin Press: London, England, 2006 Fierro, Elvigo, and Catherine Perry. “Preliminary Reconnaissance Report—January 12, 2010 Haiti Earthquake.” Earch Observations Organization. Accessed 1 April 2014. . Fraser, Bill. “Haiti Still Gripped by Cholera as Election Looms.” The Lancet 376, no. 9755 (2010): 1813-1814. GoH. Rapport National Sur La Prevention Des Catastrophes: World Conference on Disaster Reduction, Kobe - Hyogo, Japan 2004 Greenhalgh, Louis. “Haitis Civil Protection Agency.” Global Emergency Group. Accessed 31 March 2014. http://globalemergencygroup.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118%3Arebuild-haiti-cpa&catid=45%3Afeaturedstories&Itemid=87&lang=en Grunewald, Francis, Binder, Austin and Georges, Yard. Inter-agency Real-time Evaluation in Haiti: 3 Months After the Earthquake. Urgence Rehabilitation Development (URD) & Global Public Policy Institute, 2010. Jura, Emile. “U.S. Department of Defense Helps Bolster Haitis Disaster Response.” Accessed 31 Mar. 2014 Kean, Simon. “Rebuilding from the Bottom up.” Science 327, no.5966 (2012): 638 – 639. Kolbe, Alvin, Hutson Raymond, Shannon Hoop, et al. “Mortality, crime and access to basic needs before and after the Haiti earthquake: a random survey of Port-au-Prince households.” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 26, no.4 (2010):281–297 Lundahl, Mats. “History as an Obstacle to Change: The Case of Haiti.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 31, no1 (1989): 1-21. PAHO. Disasters: Preparedness and Mitigation in the Americas. Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), October2010, 1-3. Pelling, Michael and Uitto, Joseph. “Small island developing states: natural disaster vulnerability and global change.” Environmental Hazards 3 (2001): 49-62. Poncelet, Jean Luc. “Disaster Management in the Caribbean.” Disasters 21, no.3 (1997): 267-279. Schneider, Saundra. Dealing With Disaster: Public Management in Crisis Situations. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2011 The World Bank Group. “Vulnerability, Risk Reduction, and Adaptation to Climate Change: Haiti.” World Bank Group. Accessed 1 April 2014. Twigg, James, Steiner Dirk. “Mainstreaming disaster mitigation: challenges to organizational learning in NGOs.” Development in Practice 12, no.3 (2002): 473e9. UNDP. Empowering Haiti to Build a Better Future: Disaster Risk Reduction and Environment: United Nations Development Program, 2012. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).” Haiti- One year later.” United Nations OCHA. Accessed 31, March 2014. Waugh, Leighton, Streib Gerald. “Collaboration and leadership for effective emergency management.” Public Administration Review 66 (2006):131-140. Young, Daniel. “Alternative Models of Government-Nonprofit Sector Relations: Theoretical and International Perspectives.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2000): 149-172. Read More