Tag: hurricane sandy

After the Storm: Haiti’s Coming Food Crisis

by Athena Kolbe, Marie Puccio and Robert Muggah. Igarapé Institute, Strategic Note 6, December 2012, 13 pages

Excerpt from the introduction:

The 2012 hurricane season generated profound impacts on Haiti’s population by reducing food security and limiting basic service provision. Garnering lessons from these events can potentially help mitigate a future food crisis. Drawing on
extensive household surveys conducted in October and November 2012, key findings of this Strategic Note include:

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In the News: Haiti, FAO Talk in Rome

by the Caribbean Journal staff. Originally posted in the Caribbean Journal.

Haiti President Michel Martelly’s Rome trip included a meeting with Jose Graziano da Silva, the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization at the organization’s headquarters.

Martelly stressed the need for a contingency plan in Haiti to deal with the damage caused by the two storms that have damaged Haiti in the last several months, Hurricane Sandy and Tropical Storm Isaac.

Da Silva reportedly informed Martelly that the FAO was working to respond to natural disasters in Haiti.

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Press Release: New report on housing by Mark Schuller

The first in a series of four reports on housing conditions and relocation was published today. Based on research conducted in July and August 2012 by Mark Schuller, with funding from the National Science Foundation, Homeward Bound? Assessing Progress of Relocation from Haiti’s IDP camps is available on the Institute for Justice and Democracy (IJDH) website.

Striking Haiti on its way to the United States’ eastern seaboard in late October, Hurricane Sandy exposed the precariousness of the estimated 370,000 people still living under tents almost three years after the devastating earthquake.

Yet the population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) peaked at 1.5 million. As a report from the US State Department pointed out, the current IDP population is estimated at 25% of this total. Much has been said about the efforts of the international community to rehouse this vulnerable population, particularly President Michel Martelly’s “16/6” program and the NGO programs that have followed.

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In the News: Haiti food crisis feared in Sandy’s wake

Originally posted at Al Jazeera English.

Officials fear rising food prices and an increase in cholera cases in Caribbean nation where storm killed 52 people.

As Sandy causes havoc throughout the eastern US, the full extent of the storm’s damage is just beginning to emerge in the Caribbean nation of Haiti.

The UN is warning that flooding and unsanitary conditions could lead to a sharp increase in cases of cholera, while aid workers are worried that extensive crop damage will mean that food prices will rise.

Extensive damage to crops throughout the southern third of the country, as well as the high potential for a surge in cases of cholera and other water-borne diseases, could mean Haiti will see the deadliest effects of Sandy in the coming days and weeks.

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In the News: Hurricane Sandy in Haiti: At least 51 dead and record rainfalls

by Jacqueline Charles and Curtis Morgan, The Miami Herald, Oct. 28, 2012

Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe peered from the helicopter window and paused, as if needing time to process the ravaged landscape below: washed-out roads, rotting crops, flooded roads and raging rivers flowing with mud. “We have a big job to do,’’ Lamothe said to Sen. Steven Benoit, a member of the opposition party, who was along on a grim damage survey Saturday.

With the death toll rising to at least 51 and an estimated 200,000 homeless as a result of four days of relentless rain from Hurricane Sandy, Lamothe appealed for patience and called for investment in flood-control structures that are largely absent from the countryside. But he also expressed a weary frustration, one shared by many in this poor nation reeling from a string of natural disasters. With each one, he said, Haiti has taken a step backward. “It should not be normal that every time it rains, we have a catastrophe throughout the country,” Lamothe said.

Continue reading In the News: Hurricane Sandy in Haiti: At least 51 dead and record rainfalls