Preparing for Haiti's Hurricane Season
Efforts are being stepped up across Haiti in preparation for a
summer of tropical storms and hurricanes, which this year pose a
particular danger because of the 1.5 million displaced people
living in tents and shelters.
The humanitarian community is preparing for the worst by
prepositioning emergency shelter materials for 25,000 families with
a view to increase the shelter response capacity to cover the needs
for 130,000 families (650,000 people) by September.
At the same time a communications strategy is being put in place
to issue warnings to Haitians to prepare for violent weather. The
city of Gonaives, which was badly hit by hurricanes Gustav, Hanna
and Ike in 2008, was holding a simulation exercise this week.
Haiti's Department of Civil Protection (DPC) along with IOM, the
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other
humanitarian actors are producing roadside billboards and posters
with advice on safety during storms. The posters will be placed on
the information kiosks which IOM is locating in as many camps as
possible over the coming weeks.
A public awareness messaging system – general messages
about hurricane preparedness – is also being prepared for the
Haitian population. In addition, camp managers will be sent SMS
text messages up to four days before dangerous storms make landfall
so that they can prepare camp residents for possible
evacuation.
Haiti is situated in the middle of "Hurricane Alley", a path
that major tropical cyclones tend to take after they form in the
mid Atlantic.
Flash floods pose the greatest danger to life for the 9.9
million Haitians who live cheek by jowl in country which has been
denuded of trees by decades of deforestation.
Adding to the problems are dangerous conditions for the
displaced in many of the 1,300 sites set up after the earthquake.
Despite extensive engineering efforts to make camps safer, the
risks of flooding remain considerable.
"The dozens of hurricanes and storms to have struck Haiti in the
past five years have caused more than 5,000 fatalities," said Eric
Holthaus from the International Research Institute for Climate and
Society at Columbia University. "Nearly all of these deaths
resulted from heavy rains and flooding and the earthquake has
created greater vulnerability."
Efforts by the humanitarian community are now focused on getting
the displaced out of tents and into solid shelters. At the moment
there is enough dedicated contingency stock to cover the needs of
some 21,000 families (105,000 people) nationwide.
So far 5,657 transitional shelters have been built of which more
than 5,000 were completed over the last two months. An additional
15,000 transitional shelters are in the pipeline but cannot yet be
built, because not enough land is available, either because the
land is still blocked by debris from the quake or ownership is
unclear.
No one underestimates the scale of challenges ahead and the
likelihood that coming bad weather may bring another humanitarian
disaster down on the heads of the Haitian people. Even if
evacuation plans are carried out with military efficiency, there
remains the problem of where to relocate vulnerable populations as
most of the country's hurricane shelters were rendered unusable by
the earthquake.
For satellite imagery of tropical storms, please go to:
For more information, please contact:
Leonard Doyle
Media and Communications Haiti
Tel: +509 370 25066
Skype Leonard.Doyle
E-mail:
"mailto:ldoyle@iom.int">ldoyle@iom.int