Haiti Storm Damage Severe, Enduring

DON BOHNING

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- More than seven weeks after Hurricane Georges roared through Haiti the night of Sept. 22-23, it is clear that the long-term losses in the hemisphere's poorest and most vulnerable nation were much more far-reaching than anyone initially realized and the recovery period will be long and painful.``It's such a fragile environment and the country is used to dealing with a lot of pain,'' said Tom Friedeberg, local director for CARE, the international relief agency. ``People are so much more vulnerable here than anywhere. They're hit hard by natural disasters of less severity.'' Or, as another aid official put it: ``What's a minor cold in another country is a major case of pneumonia in Haiti.'' Houses were obliterated, villages were flooded, hundreds died, roads and bridges were destroyed, crops and livestock -- the lifeblood of peasant farmers -- were wiped out, and fear of epidemics from polluted water is growing. A full assessment is not yet in, but it is expected that for those who survived, the worst may lie ahead, as food shortages occur and prices rise over the coming months. This in a country where 80 percent of the rural population -- which accounts for 70 percent of Haiti's people -- already fails to get its daily recommended calorie requirement and the annual per capita income is $250, compared to $1,460 in the neighboring Dominican Republic, also a poor country.

Food Production Hit

Georges' path took it through areas in the northern half of the country that account for the majority of Haiti's food production. By some accounts, it wiped out 60 percent of the country's food crops during the peak production period. In some areas, 100 percent of the crops -- including such basic foodstuffs as rice, plantains and beans -- were devastated. A preliminary damage assessment by the U.S. Agency for International Development says that Hurricane Georges seriously weakened the rural economy. ``Farmers are decapitalized and unable, without assistance, to bounce back and begin new plantings,'' it says. ``Overwhelming pressure on the rural family to, simultaneously, rebuild roads;clean irrigation canals; get seeds and inputs; plant new crops; and while the new crops grow, find jobs to feed themselves and pay their children's schooling costs at the beginning of the school year, may crush their will to keep farming,'' concludes the assessment by USAID, which has pledged $22.5 million in relief and recovery funding. The loss of livestock was a heavy blow for many rural families who depend on their pigs, cows, goats, horses and sheep. The animals provide food, income and transportation, and are a form of savings and investment. Still another fear is that -- with roads wiped out and no way to get crops to market where they did survive the storm -- peasants may cut down even more of Haiti's few remaining trees for charcoal to give them a source of income.The already denuded landscape was a major contributor to the widespread flooding that accounted for most of Hurricane Georges' damage in Haiti.

Loss is Incalculable

The impact of the agricultural loss remains incalculable. Kesner Pharel, a Haitian economist, notes that Haiti's economy grew by a surprising 3 percent in the last fiscal year, in large part fueled by a ``very good agricultural sector'' which also helped bring inflation down to 8.2 percent. And, adds Pharel, ``a lot of people were living off agriculture.'' Because of the drop in agricultural production caused by Georges, food imports will increase this year and Pharel predicts that inflation will be running at 10 percent annually by January. And food normally imported from the neighboring Dominican Republic won't be available because of Georges' devastation there.``Agriculture suffered a lot,'' said Frantz Jean-Philippe, in charge of disaster assistance for the Haitian Red Cross, who observes that Haiti's agricultural system is based on small farmers with their damage and recovery time depending on their individual assets. He said a survey of 587 families in the Central Plateau, north of Port-au-Prince,indicated 208 houses damaged and 93 destroyed; about 282 animals lost and crops -- mostly beans and plantains -- wiped out for 223 families. ``What we're afraid of is that there might be some kind of epidemic because most of them use water that came from either springs or rivers and they are all polluted by the flood with dead animals, all kinds of debris coming down there . . . water they use for drinking or cooking. There is the danger of typhoid, malaria or hepatitis . . . any kind of intestinal infection,'' Jean-Philippe said. Estimates of the dead range from more than 200 by the government to more than 400 by USAID. Said Jean-Philippe: ``We probably will never know. We don't have a structured system to account for the dead and missing.''``It [the hurricane] is not just another obstacle for Haiti to overcome,'' he said. ``It is a major obstacle to overcome.''Yet Port-au-Prince, the teeming capital with its two to three million people,escaped relatively unscathed, perhaps helping to explain why Haiti's plight has attracted so little international attention. ``I don't think people in Port-au-Prince have a full understanding of what took place,'' said a foreign diplomat. ``Local TV did not cover it, in part because of an inability to get access. There's no full sense of the reality.''

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