In the Rubble of Haiti's Quake

By Julie Hyman

Washington, D.C., January 15, 2010 – Piles of unrecognizable grey rubble were everywhere as throngs of people walked aimlessly through the streets. Daniel O’Neil had never seen anything like it. 

As the former director of the Pan American Development Foundation’s (PADF) disaster program in Haiti, O’Neil had seen the damage after hurricanes struck the small Caribbean country several times. Those didn’t even compare to the devastation from the 7.0 earthquake that hit just west of Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.

“You see devastation on every side. You’re driving around piles of rubble…You see vehicles are crunched, you see people trying to dig through the rubble,” he says.

O’Neil, who was sent from the neighboring Dominican Republic where he currently manages PADF’s Our Border program, was shocked by the level of destruction – and how it worsened as he drove into the capital city. 

On the outskirts of town, walls were slightly cracked. Then, as he continued to drive, the walls around homes broken into several pieces. As he approached Port-au-Prince, the walls around buildings had completely collapsed. Buildings had pancaked in on themselves, leaving roofs as the only part visible. 

People “wanted to dig through the rubble (to rescue others) but there was no way to do that without heavy equipment and there was no access to heavy equipment,” O’Neil says.

Cars sat parked in local gas stations, stuck and waiting for fuel deliveries. Corpses were laid out in the streets, and people were terrified for their family members and friends. Landline phones were down, so people desperately called loved ones on their cell phones, hoping that they would somehow find a connection. Many people slept outside, afraid that aftershocks would cause more destruction in the night.

“They were afraid of a second quake…as if the earth shifted out of gear and now it needed to shift back in again and could cause a second quake,” explains O’Neil.

O’Neil carried a small amount of emergency supplies with him, including money, water, juice and ready to eat food like salami, as he surveyed the damage as part of his reconnaissance work.
 
PADF, the natural disaster relief arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), is providing assistance.  The organization continues to gather international support from companies, governments and individuals. They will continue to work hard to distribute water, food, and supplies.

“Poor Haiti was hardly finished digging out from the four hurricanes that hit just two years ago,” O’Neil writes on the Our Border website. “It is heartbreaking to see the damage.”