Hurricane recovery update

It's raining tonight in Port-au-Prince, but gently compared to several weeks ago when the series of 3 storms (Gustav, Hanna, and Ike) passed through.

Estimates of the destruction from those storms continue to rise. CNN and the AP report a current death toll of nearly 800. Road damage makes it difficult to reach the most affected areas. Last week, I watched US Marine helicopters on aid runs take off and land from the Port-au-Prince airport. We've seen the cost to transport our latest batch of manba (the fortified peanut butter) double. It comes from a factory in the northern city of Cap-Haitien and damaged roads have contributed to longer transport times at higher gas prices.

Flood damages to crops has caused losses of 20-30% of rice production and 10-20% of banana production. Recommendations are for emergency food distribution to continue until the next harvest cycles in March and June 2009. It's doubtful whether those recommendations will followed through on. The current combined aid appeal of US$107 million is less than 20% funded and it is expected that world attention and relief agency efforts will move on sooner than later.

I haven't been outside of relatively unaffected Port-au-Prince since the storms but I've been hearing lots of stories from friends working for organizations involved in the relief effort. People working up north in hardest hit Gonaives talk about the mud that's everywhere - blocking streets and flowing through what is left of homes. Schools are scheduled to reopen tomorrow after a nationwide delay in the start of the new school year. Up north, this requires clearing out not only the mud but also the families taking refugee in the school buildings.

In the South, roads between the captial Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes, Haiti's second largest city, remain seriously damaged. Right now it's impossible to make the trip without crossing part of the road in a boat. Fuel trucks are too heavy to cross on the small boats and so gas must be carried in a barrel at a time. As a result, gas stations are running out of gas. My friend B called me from Les Cayes on Friday night saying he was cooking in the dark since power lines had still not been repaired and gas shortages meant he couldn't run the generator. Several of my Canadian Embassy friends spent time on a Canadian Naval vessel that came to help with distribution of relief supplies. One of them loved the experience but the other said it was really hard for him to see how people fought over the supplies as soon as armed guards left the scene.

In the wake of the storms, my opinion of Digicel, the Irish-owned mobile phone provider that dominates the Haitian market, remains as high as ever. The company donated $1 million to relief efforts including replacement phones and $400,000 in free phone credit for affected families.