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Haiti Storm Updates
See Neil's Photos HereGreetings all, Many people have been asking for pictures of the recent flooding around the country. So rather than email them to everyone, I figured I would just put them online for people to look at and download themselves. We went to Gonaives Saturday, with a truckload of water purfication equipment, Rice, Oil and equipment to repair the city water system. What we found was a city still under water, people trying to find out how to survive while fighting over the smallest things. Humiliating, demeaning, horrible...use your own words. It is incredible. Roads are cut and bridges down all over the country. The only remaining bridge to access Gonaives by road was cut yesterday by Hurricane Ike, just hours after we came back across it. Now the entire Artibonite and Northwest is cut off from the rest of the country. No one knows when vehicles will get there again. One bright spot is the Haitian governement managed to mobilize around 50 dump trucks, front end loaders, bulldozers and graders to get to Gonaives only 3 days after the flooding. They were there on Saturday and had begun rebuilding the detour road from 4 yrs ago around the "desert" lake. While it's sad the Governement hasn't been able to mitigate this disaster, at least they are responsive. We tried to get to the city water system to see what it needs for repairs, but couldn't get within 200 yards of it due to mud and water that were still more than hip deep. We will attempt to go back tomorrow or wednesday to get a better look at the system. The main distribution pipeline was cut and the control panels and 180kw generator submerged. My guess is that the control modules will need to be replaced, though the pumps we installed 4 yrs ago should be fine. In the meantime, we are sending some of our water trucks to haul water into the city. We are in contact with the National Potable Water office and have put this equipment at their disposal, paying for all the fuel, operator and other costs. Latest word is that the flood waters returned with Hurricane Ike even higher than 5 days earlier with Hanna. More roads are cut in the city and more of the city water system destroyed. See Neil's Photos Here Written by Neil Van Dine |
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