October 18, 2016
By: Michel Guillemette, Haiti advisor and project manager with Emergency Relief Fund—Haiti
Roncalli International Foundation
1 - Statistics from the Department of Civil Protection, dated October 12
Population
- 473 dead, 75 disappeared, 339 injured;
- 2.1 million people affected, including 894,057 children,
- 175,509 people in 224 temporary shelters;
- 12.9% of the population is affected, divided by department below:
- South (464,986), Grand-Anse (374,641), Nippes (174,688), South East (158,150), West (149,099), West (54,661) and Artibonite (34,550),
- 510 cases of cholera reported (356 in the South region),
- 592,581 children in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
Material damage
- 33% of all hospitals in the South region are damaged;
- Matthew affected 10% of all tourism infrastructure;
- The Department of the Environment is concerned about environmental damage.
Good news
- Over 60% of transportation routes have been des restored;
- 50 containers of food have successfully arrived in the affected areas.
2 - Relevant facts as of October 19, 2016
- Humanitarian aid is being received in major cities and surrounding regions, but this is not the case for the regions located farther from the two most damaged cities: Les Cayes and Jérémie. Thousands of people, mainly peasants living in rural areas, have been abandoned to their fate and are still awaiting emergency aid. These men, women and children have lost everything and many are injured, without clean drinking water, without food or shelter. The region is currently in the middle of the rainy season, which lasts from October to December.
- The main causes of this inhumane situation are: extremely difficult road access, the fact that the damage is spread over a very large area (for people not in temporary shelters), attacks on aid convoys, the weakness of State structures despite willingness to manage the disaster, etc. The current need for emergency aid has not yet been met.
- Anger is growing among desperate victims who have nothing to lose; searching through the rubble for food, they are hungry and they feel like humanitarian aid is slow in arriving. They criticize the government for its lack of coordination in distributing food and water to the population.
- Scenes of violence and looting: Tuesday, October 11 in Jérémie, residents built a barricade out of tree trunks, forcing the three trucks of the humanitarian convoy to stop.
- To secure the delivery of aid, an additional 60 officers of the Haitian National Police have been deployed, and American marines are on the ground to help secure the South.
- According to international NGOs, many victims received emergency aid but coordination remains a challenge on the ground. This is the responsibility of emergency committees established by the DPC, but some are better organized than others.
- Canada has made two announcements pledging aid of $6.5 million, including $2 million to four Canadian NGOs: CECI, AAH, MDM and Oxfam-Québec (published on October 14, 2016). A Canadian representative, Mme M-E Castonguay, was dispatched to the Canadian embassy in Haiti to monitor the situation.
- Many International Red Cross chapters of the Red Cross movement (including the Haitian, Canadian and American Red Cross teams) are working together to bring relief to almost all the affected area, distributing water, dry foods, hygiene kits, etc.