Right after the earthquake in Haiti, I wrote the following little brief and sent it around to a few friends. I was trying to frame the response to Haiti in terms of the only other major demolition of a large city I could think of that happened almost instantly - Hiroshima. The second point I made, about the infrastructure of the city came back to the front of my mind in spades when Chile was rocked with one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded (and an aftershock that was a strong as the earthquake in Haiti).
The bottom line, I think, is that the difference between the destruction in Haiti vs. Chile has to do with:
1. Differences in the infrastructure already in place
2. Proximity of the center of the quake to the metropolitan areas.
ok.. here's what I'd written back when Haiti got shaken...
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In 1945, when the Untied States bombed Hiroshima the entire city was demolished. The destruction in Haiti affects a similarly sized population to Hiroshima. If one compares the images before and after of Hiroshima, and then does the same for Port au Prince, the destruction is strikingly similar (with the exception of the extreme burns and ash created by the kilotons level nuclear detonation).
There are some critical things to consider in the United States response and the response in general.
Response will be slow:
1. In the case of Hiroshima, we were at war and very quickly went in and occupied the city after detonation. We sent the USACE in and set up barracks and immediately started keeping peace and working on infrastructure (putting servicemen at risk to radiation and fallout cloud effects). In Haiti, because it was a disaster and not a planned destruction like the bombing of a city, no swift plan was in place to send in teams to set up and rebuild infrastructure. There were not the resources in place or en-route to that area starting before it happened. We start out lagging behind.
2. The structural integrity of the buildings in Haiti are inferior to standards elsewhere in the world. This is because they are the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. They were in dire straits to begin with. This amplified the destructive power of the quake and makes response difficult because the infrastructure was fragile to begin with and woefully underdeveloped compared to other countries. Haiti today lags decades behind the Japan of the 1940's.
Where is our expertise to respond:
1. The only people who know how to approach this level of disaster from an infrastructure perspective are the USACE. Americans have not faced a problem like this since the 1940's. Even the Tsunami response was aided by superior infrastructure and a much bigger distribution of population density compared toHaiti.
2. Our most mobile way of providing supplies and coordinating things into the area is through the Navy.
3. The US can provide more value with our logistics abilities, management, technical savvy, convening power, and corporate outreach than with our cash.
There are some critical things to consider in the United States response and the response in general.
Response will be slow:
1. In the case of Hiroshima, we were at war and very quickly went in and occupied the city after detonation. We sent the USACE in and set up barracks and immediately started keeping peace and working on infrastructure (putting servicemen at risk to radiation and fallout cloud effects). In Haiti, because it was a disaster and not a planned destruction like the bombing of a city, no swift plan was in place to send in teams to set up and rebuild infrastructure. There were not the resources in place or en-route to that area starting before it happened. We start out lagging behind.
2. The structural integrity of the buildings in Haiti are inferior to standards elsewhere in the world. This is because they are the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. They were in dire straits to begin with. This amplified the destructive power of the quake and makes response difficult because the infrastructure was fragile to begin with and woefully underdeveloped compared to other countries. Haiti today lags decades behind the Japan of the 1940's.
Where is our expertise to respond:
1. The only people who know how to approach this level of disaster from an infrastructure perspective are the USACE. Americans have not faced a problem like this since the 1940's. Even the Tsunami response was aided by superior infrastructure and a much bigger distribution of population density compared toHaiti.
2. Our most mobile way of providing supplies and coordinating things into the area is through the Navy.
3. The US can provide more value with our logistics abilities, management, technical savvy, convening power, and corporate outreach than with our cash.
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