Several weeks ago we took a look at the devastation following the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti. There were reports of hundreds of thousand of people dead, and the vast majority of structures were damaged or leveled. Emergency aid could not get in, looters were running rampant, and armed thugs were harassing the victims of the natural disaster. Then, as the mainstream media is prone to do, it got bored and went onto the next shiny disaster to shock and anger us with. To tell the truth, we at TPP can't remember what it was that pushed Haiti out of the headlines, but gone it was.
In our last piece on the Haitian earthquake we compared the capital Port-au-Prince, with post-Katrina New Orleans. This time we will recap the situation in Port-au Prince, and see the earthquake's effects on another American city - Miami.
Port-au-Prince remains as Port-au-Prince always has been - an tragic third world slum where a few wealthy, strong or powerful people take their comforts. This privileged class does not care for or even acknowledge the 80% of the population living in squalor and desperate poverty. The emergency aid has arrived and much of it disappeared into the corrupt black hole that most foreign dollars have fallen into for over 200 years. A downsized US military presence still maintains control of the airport, but control of operations has been ceded to the woefully inept and overwhelmed United Nations. Once the logistics of getting aid into Haiti were worked out, most developed nations dropped their loot and headed for the door. Haiti is still mired in poverty, hunger, filth, violence and hopelessness. The only difference since the earthquake is that now there are less buildings, so more people are sleeping in the streets. The army of the Dominican Republic has been dispatched to it's border with Haiti to keep the chaos from spilling over into there. The call made by TPP to commit to rebuilding Haiti into a viable nation has fallen on the same deaf ears as our call to make New Orleans a vibrant and prosperous city in the wake of Katrina. Long term commitment seems to have no place in the Playstation nation.
Miami has borne the brunt of the downside of our aid mission to Haiti. As the nearest US city to the disaster. Miami has served as staging area, logistical hub, and processing center for managing emergency response. City facilities, hospitals, first responders, military bases, airports, marine ports, shelters, detention centers and infrastructure have been strained to the limit. The local budget and economy as well. The city has opened its doors and it’s heart, and they are paying the price for it now. As the cynic would say, no good deed goes unpunished.
TPP has received disturbing reports that have been confirmed by persons with firsthand knowledge. These reports deal with security and public health concerns involved in the initial humanitarian response to the earthquake. Many will remember reports of the US military and emergency aid agencies taking heat for what seemed to be a slow response in getting things off the ground. The military in particular wanted a plan in place to assure proper allocation of resources and personnel. Pressure was applied from the “highest levels” to “take action absent a completely vetted plan.”
The security issues are typical of the ad hoc response to this disaster, and a primary reason that the military would have preferred to proceed with a plan. As was widely reported in the main stream media, the main prison in Port-au-Prince had collapsed in places and was structurally unsound. This prison held the worst of the criminals in a country where drug and human trafficking support a large sector of the economy.The prisoners held there who had not escaped during the quake were released as the Haitian government did not have the ability to feed them. A reader with family connections to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reported that these criminals have infiltrated refugee flights flying into Homestead Air Force Base, just outside Miami. Several have been apprehended carrying high quality forged documents, indicating connections to organized crime in Haiti. We have received confirmation of this type of incident occurring on multiple occasions through military law enforcement in Miami, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Speculation is that many more are not detected or detained as criminals.
It has been further reported that the vast majority of Haitian refugees are arriving undocumented, making verification of their identities near impossible. These refugees are being held at detention centers throughout Miami as INS processes admission requests to the United States. As identification and a criminal check is not possible, these refugees are normally released into the country upon completion of the paperwork and interview. This is a prescription for disaster. Miami residents remember the Mariel boatlift of 1980 when then-President Carter laid out the welcome mat for all Cuban refugees, and Fidel Castro took the opportunity to empty his prisons onto our shores. While we empathize with those who are victims of the quake, our focus should be on aiding these individuals into returning to a healed nation. Scooping them up from Haiti, and releasing them into the United States to fend for themselves is not helpful. Neither the United States nor the individual left standing outside the gates of the Krome Detention Center, released into a strange country with no money, no contacts and no prospects benefits from this situation. It is a recipe for increased crimes of desperation, and a fattening of the already overburdened state welfare rolls.
Beyond the security and social strains being put on Miami by the federal humanitarian response, there are public health concerns as well. Screenings for infectious disease in the refugees has been uncoordinated or unavailable according to local healthcare professionals. There are near epidemic rates of infectious hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS in Haiti. Refugees, whether aware of their health situation or not, have been routinely released without benefit of anything beyond a cursory medical examination, if that. Again, the lack of a plan by the federal government is putting the Miami community, and by extension all of us, at risk.
Common Sense Dictates
The American people are the kindest and most generous people on the planet. No matter the disaster, we are the first in line to offer aid – to friend and foe alike. The pictures of the devastation in Haiti were wrenching, and the demand for fast response was both right and in keeping with our desire to help. The military, however, has an excellent point. With no plan in place, we wind up stumbling over ourselves trying to help, and putting ourselves at risk in the process. There is no reason for this situation to remain as it is. We know that there will be more disasters, and we know that we will respond to them. That is our nature.
Since that is our nature, we should have a plan, rather than just throw everything at whatever unsuspecting community is nearest. Doing something quickly is not as good as doing something effectively. A plan would allow us to do both. Not every situation will require the need level of Haiti, but need can be anticipated.
In this era of the two second attention span, our society has become reactive rather than proactive. Planning has given way to the Nike attitude of “just do it”. Our government reflects this and amplifies it to “just do something” (and do it now). A lesson can be drawn from the Boy Scouts, who’s motto is “Be Prepared”. Though no one person and no entity can foresee every situation that will come to pass, that does not absolve us of the responsibility to be prepared for likely disasters. If the federal government aspires to be “rescue central”, it would do well to create a basic framework for varying levels of response that would have the basics of security, public health and logistics laid out in a clear form. Common sense dictates that being prepared will minimize both suffering and waste in getting help to the victims of natural disaster. Common sense is what we’re all about.
RLB
Sounds typical for the feds to leave the locals holding the bag. It's going to get worse in Haiti though - US troops are pulling out and look to be entirely gone in a couple of weeks. Follow through all around.
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My brother is staitioned at Homestead. He's been down to Gitmo as well. He says that all in all, he'd rather be a guest at Gitmo than in the conditions these Haitian refugees need to live in. Most get transferred into detention centers that are little more than jails for processing. I guess it's better than what they left, but it's overcrowded, dirty and just short of chaos. They are getting some bad guys too. My brother was in on about a dozen cases where the documents were just too clean. Looks like mostly mid level drug smugglers that pissed the bosses off or maybe they are trying to open new territory here. Some real thugs too - scary types. It does make you wonder who is getting through.
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Well, better to help those in need, even if it isn't ideal conditions. It looks like the police are getting the criminals as they come in. People are getting the medical treatment that they need, and people are being housed and fed. I don't see that being a bad thing.
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Everyone complained about Bush on Katrina - this is just as half-assed but there's no reporting about it. I haven't seen this anywhere except here. Keep up the good fight. The best response is always on the local level. The feds trip under their own weight.
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See, that really could be the basis of the whole problem. The most efficient meaans of delivering help is the one closest to the people. Local will always be more efficient, because they are right there and motivated. All Washington can do is throw money at a problem. Whather it's Bush on Katrina or Obama on Haiti, the real task of providing help falls on where the victims wind up, on a local level.
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Well at least they are attempting some sort of order with the Haiti quake. I'm from Houston. With Katrina everyone just flooded into town and the federal response was "deal with it". It was up to the city to figure out what to do. FEMA was useless. It's not like we didn't have our own problems following Katrina. We had damage and flooding, not as bad for sure as New Orleans, but the last thing we needed was for a few thousand homeless to descend on us. They swamped the system at a time that the citizens of Houston had need. It was really frustrating to have my services interrupted just because some newbie with a sad story showed up. It's not like they are going back either. This is the sort of thing that makes you wonder why you work hard and pay your taxes.
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While i agree ythat having a plan in place might be the best idea, this was a natural disaster and we needed to respond. Wasn't it Dr. Death Donald Rumsfeld who said that you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want? I'm not sure that any disaster will just neatly line up with a plan. Sometimes you just need to go in and get it done.
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I was under the impression that there were designated staging areas, such as Homestead, and procedures in place to respond to this kind of thing. Was that all just my imagination? A general skeleton is in existence. Like Donald Rumsfeld also said, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Just because we are ready doesn't mean that the country that we are helping is. When we got in there was no airport, no sea ports and the roads were pretty much impassable. All the little shacks had fallen down. There were hundreds of thousands of people with no shelter, no water and no food. There was also no way to get it to them. Most of the people flown out were medical emergencies or had family to contact in the US. The reported probems represent a tiny minority of the operation. If 10,000 people were saved and a few criminals scooted in for the ride, so be it. Our system isn't broken though. If it was we wouldn't have gotten the criminals that we did.
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Funny how CNN could be there right away, and the US military couldn't.
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CNN arrived with a couple of cameras and a sat dish. The military arrived with rescue equipment and supplies to care for a few million people. You try getting that amount on men and material moved any more quickly. Snarky really doesn't help the dialogue.
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The couple of criminals getting through doesn't bother me nearly as much as the lack of health screenings. A few months ago we're all in a panic over H1N1 flu even though far more people were likely to die of a non-H1N1 strain. Still everyone had to get vaccinated to avoid a plague. Now the government is flooding Miami (with that nice big international airport) with potential cases of diseases that will spread like wildfire? What are they thinking? If anything at all?
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I hate to tell you but from a law enforcement standpoint, the Haitian gangsters are about the most vicious. They make the Columbians look like polite little model citizens. If a serious gangster gets a beachhead in Miami all hell could be breaking loose soon enough. We better hope no one serious gets through.
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No screening for infectious disease? I didn't think that was even possible in this day and age. They hold my dog at customs for a couple of weeks when I take her out of the country. I just can't believe we wouldn't be more careful when we are talking about the possibility of human beings having their health threatened.
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It is not the job of the federal government to bail out every disaster victim on the planet. Charity is from the individual. This was argued about in the first congress in providing relief to flood victims. It is not the business of government according to the framers of the Constitution.
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Hey, is Miami getting any reimbursement for expenses with regard to the relief? I hear that most of the hospitals are in pretty bad shape already, what with the recession and all. This has to be an added burden.
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So the Haitian President is meeting with Obama today. Maybe he'll drop by Miami and give some of his citizens a lift home...
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Was listening to the press statement after the meeting. With all of the problems Preval has in his country, he still took time to warn about global warming. Maybe if we set him up with electricity and some air conditioners he'll get back to raising his country out of the third world.
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I saw some stories about people not getting treated because no one was going to pay for it. Is that true?
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We saw some similar stories and are looking into it. We will report in our next posting.
RLB
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Well, you would think that since Obama came through in such a big way for Haiti, he might have been made to add remarks about Obama's pet projects. After all there is money on tne line here in the form of more aid.
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I was impressed with President Preval's looking at this disaster as an opportunity to make his country better. He spoke of decentralizing things and providing a friendlier atmosphere for business. He wants to improve his people's lives. There are states in America that gould take a cue from that attitude. California, maybe.
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Those last three paragraphs were awesome! First, it was nice to read something positive about American people. Secondly, I REALLY liked this part: "Doing something quickly is not as good as doing something effectively." It seems so obvious and simple, but yet it was really good that you wrote it - it stood out to me.
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