Eleven thousand people have been employed with pay for clearing rubble, cleaning out drainage canals and building transitional shelters. Others have helped clear debris, making way for 8,000 transitional shelters that have been built. More than 1,300 water and sanitation units have also been installed.
Despite these results, people have the impression that not too much has been done in Haiti, said Dr. Banatte.
"I think that is very true if you are looking at it from the (perspective) of reconstruction; even the rubble hasn’t been removed yet," he said.
"But if you look at it in terms of meeting food, water, and sanitation needs of nearly three million people in a highly vulnerable group, the efforts have been very successful."
In contrasting circumstances in Haiti with the earthquakes in Chile and Japan, Dr. Banatte noted that the earthquake in Haiti had a magnitude of 7.2 and lasted 35 seconds.
The subsequent earthquakes in Chile and Japan were significantly stronger and lasted longer.
People ask why 230,000 died from the quake in Haiti, when in Japan, less than 10 percent of that number (including victims of the earthquake and tsunami) were killed, he said. While all of the earthquakes have been tragic and in Japan the nuclear crisis continues, the disaster in Haiti was exacerbated by many factors.
The people in Haiti were not prepared. The nation’s last earthquake was 200 years ago. Because the country is prone to hurricanes; municipal buildings were made to withstand wind and floods, but not to withstand an earthquake.
Video images of the earthquake in Japan showed people running from buildings. When the earth started to shake in Haiti, people thought something was happening in the streets and rushed into buildings to protect themselves, said Dr. Banatte.
The distance from the earthquake epicenters to major population centers was another factor.
Most of those who died in Haiti were in Port-au-Prince, a city built for 500,000 that was inhabited by three million people, which was near the epicenter. In Chile and Japan, the earthquake epicenters were 60 to 80 miles from major population centers.
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Port-au-Prince, the capital city center, was destroyed. "It collapsed the capacity of the leaders – the decision making people – to react because they themselves were victims," he said.
Dr. Banatte said he hoped his presentation encouraged people to continue to help Haiti in the future.
He encouraged people to "use their constituency, their voting power, to talk with Congresspeople (entreating them to) not cut the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable."
Printed with permission from the Catholic Transcript, newspaper from the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn.