Authorities warn Haiti of future disasters

By Melissa Bryant
Reporter~SKNVibes.com

Photo courtesy of the AP

According to BBC Caribbean, Head of the German Red Cross Emergency Response Unit in Gonaives Marilena Chatziantoniou has described the area as “an accident waiting to happen again”.

The passage of a series of devastating storms and hurricanes across the nation within a one-month period destroyed infrastructure, damaged over 60 percent of the country’s agricultural harvest and plunged the 300 000 residents of the northern city of Gonaives into misery.

“Due to its geographical location Gonaives will be hit by cyclones again. But unless deforestation is stopped and long-term infrastructure projects to rebalance the damaged ecosystem are implemented, every next big cyclone will hit the area harder than the ones before,” said Chatziantoniou.

She said there has been talk of relocating the city’s centre to a less flood-prone area to avoid a similar catastrophe. ~~Adz:Right~~

The United Nations has appealed for US$108M in emergency aid to help rebuild Haiti’s infrastructure and address reforestation, but so far only 40 percent of the target has been met.

To compound matters, the country has yet to rebuild a large part of its road network and infrastructure that were destroyed by the 2004 floods which left 3 000 dead and hundreds of internal refugees.

Haitian Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis has warned that the fate of Gonaives could befall the entire country.

“The whole country is facing an ecological disaster. We cannot go on like this or we will disappear one day. There will not be 400, 500 or 1 000 deaths. There are going to be a million deaths,” she warned.