Thursday, February 4, 2010
Before rising again, Haiti needs to tear down
BY JIM WYSS
[email protected]
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- As an excavator digs into the mound of twisted steel, cement, shoes and spreadsheets that used to be the downtown branch of Sogebel Bank, swarms of young men plunge into the debris.
They drag out file cabinets, electrical boxes and anything else that might contain a few grams of metal.
The heavy machinery was hired by the bank to look for the vault and the director's office, a security officer said. The scavengers were there to scrape out a living.
More than two weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the work of taking apart a ravaged city is slowly, and chaotically, beginning.
While aid agencies and the government are still focused on tending to the hundreds of thousands left homeless and injured, many Haitians are picking up the pieces and moving on.
The government estimates that 25,000 government offices and businesses either toppled or need to be demolished. In addition, there are 225,000 residences that are no longer habitable.
In all, some 2.1 billion cubic feet of concrete and rubble need to be hauled out of the city.
However, there is no official demolition plan in place yet. Asked about tearing down the teetering buildings that crowd the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince, the spokesman for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, Vincenzo Pugliese, said demolition is part of the reconstruction effort.
``I know it's a priority but other discussions have to take place before that,'' Pugliese said. ``We are moving too far ahead if we start talking about reconstruction efforts.''
RAZING WHAT'S LEFT
But many are ready to start now. Bulldozers and backhoes are kicking up dust as businesses have been razing their lots. Crews can be seen with pickaxes and sledgehammers.
Marie Carmel Matthieu stood in a small patch of land that used to be the garden of her two-story home. The building had collapsed entirely, but the woman and her family had managed to pull a few dozen cinder blocks from the wreckage. As relatives kicked away garbage and moved stones, Matthieu said they were going to build a place where five of them could live.
``It's going to be small,'' she said. ``But we don't have any choice.''
While demolition on a massive scale may not be taking place, rubble removal is. The United Nations Development Program has 12,000 people cleaning up debris from buildings that have toppled into the street and other public places. By next week, they hope to have 50,000 people clearing roads under the jobs-for-work program.
The project is intended to pump quick cash into the economy, said Eric Overvest, Haiti's director of the program. But he hinted that this program, which pays workers about $4.50 for a half-day's work, could become the blueprint for the future razing and rebuilding of the country.
``Our priority now is clearing rubble from public spaces, but our work may go beyond that at some point,'' he said.
On Thursday, dozens of workers under the program heaved shovels full of concrete and twisted iron into a dump truck, which was bound for a collection site on the outskirts of town.
While much of the debris is simply garbage, some of it could become the foundation for the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince, said Herb Duane, the president of a Boston demolition firm that cleared the earthquake damage in Managua and Guatemala in the 1970s.
Poured concrete can be crushed, turned into aggregate and reused, he said. To do that, however, the country will likely have to import mobile crushing plants that separate out metals and other debris.
And while steel rebar should not be reused in construction, it has a scrap value on the international market of about $100 a ton, Duane said.
SCAVENGING
But it's unlikely much metal will make it to the collection site, as armies of scavengers have been picking through the remains of the city.
Rigaud Michelle fought his way through a mass of knife- and machete-wielding competitors to retrieve the empty husk of a filing cabinet from the debris of the bank.
He said he could turn the cabinet into four stoves and sell each for the equivalent of 71 cents. Others said they could make about $3 for a sack full of scrap metal.
For many, tearing down is the first step to starting over.
When the quake struck, Theleys Jin lost his house, two sisters and his business -- a three-story technical school. On Thursday, he and a group of friends were trying to pluck a laptop out of the building that had pancaked to about a quarter of its size. When he's satisfied he has saved everything he can, he plans to start breaking it down brick by brick and rebuilding.
``You need to have the strength to take care of yourself,'' he said of the job ahead. ``No one else is coming to help.''
Miami Herald staff writers Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report from Haiti and Andres Viglucci from Miami.
[email protected]
PORT-AU-PRINCE -- As an excavator digs into the mound of twisted steel, cement, shoes and spreadsheets that used to be the downtown branch of Sogebel Bank, swarms of young men plunge into the debris.
They drag out file cabinets, electrical boxes and anything else that might contain a few grams of metal.
The heavy machinery was hired by the bank to look for the vault and the director's office, a security officer said. The scavengers were there to scrape out a living.
More than two weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the work of taking apart a ravaged city is slowly, and chaotically, beginning.
While aid agencies and the government are still focused on tending to the hundreds of thousands left homeless and injured, many Haitians are picking up the pieces and moving on.
The government estimates that 25,000 government offices and businesses either toppled or need to be demolished. In addition, there are 225,000 residences that are no longer habitable.
In all, some 2.1 billion cubic feet of concrete and rubble need to be hauled out of the city.
However, there is no official demolition plan in place yet. Asked about tearing down the teetering buildings that crowd the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince, the spokesman for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, Vincenzo Pugliese, said demolition is part of the reconstruction effort.
``I know it's a priority but other discussions have to take place before that,'' Pugliese said. ``We are moving too far ahead if we start talking about reconstruction efforts.''
RAZING WHAT'S LEFT
But many are ready to start now. Bulldozers and backhoes are kicking up dust as businesses have been razing their lots. Crews can be seen with pickaxes and sledgehammers.
Marie Carmel Matthieu stood in a small patch of land that used to be the garden of her two-story home. The building had collapsed entirely, but the woman and her family had managed to pull a few dozen cinder blocks from the wreckage. As relatives kicked away garbage and moved stones, Matthieu said they were going to build a place where five of them could live.
``It's going to be small,'' she said. ``But we don't have any choice.''
While demolition on a massive scale may not be taking place, rubble removal is. The United Nations Development Program has 12,000 people cleaning up debris from buildings that have toppled into the street and other public places. By next week, they hope to have 50,000 people clearing roads under the jobs-for-work program.
The project is intended to pump quick cash into the economy, said Eric Overvest, Haiti's director of the program. But he hinted that this program, which pays workers about $4.50 for a half-day's work, could become the blueprint for the future razing and rebuilding of the country.
``Our priority now is clearing rubble from public spaces, but our work may go beyond that at some point,'' he said.
On Thursday, dozens of workers under the program heaved shovels full of concrete and twisted iron into a dump truck, which was bound for a collection site on the outskirts of town.
While much of the debris is simply garbage, some of it could become the foundation for the rebuilding of Port-au-Prince, said Herb Duane, the president of a Boston demolition firm that cleared the earthquake damage in Managua and Guatemala in the 1970s.
Poured concrete can be crushed, turned into aggregate and reused, he said. To do that, however, the country will likely have to import mobile crushing plants that separate out metals and other debris.
And while steel rebar should not be reused in construction, it has a scrap value on the international market of about $100 a ton, Duane said.
SCAVENGING
But it's unlikely much metal will make it to the collection site, as armies of scavengers have been picking through the remains of the city.
Rigaud Michelle fought his way through a mass of knife- and machete-wielding competitors to retrieve the empty husk of a filing cabinet from the debris of the bank.
He said he could turn the cabinet into four stoves and sell each for the equivalent of 71 cents. Others said they could make about $3 for a sack full of scrap metal.
For many, tearing down is the first step to starting over.
When the quake struck, Theleys Jin lost his house, two sisters and his business -- a three-story technical school. On Thursday, he and a group of friends were trying to pluck a laptop out of the building that had pancaked to about a quarter of its size. When he's satisfied he has saved everything he can, he plans to start breaking it down brick by brick and rebuilding.
``You need to have the strength to take care of yourself,'' he said of the job ahead. ``No one else is coming to help.''
Miami Herald staff writers Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report from Haiti and Andres Viglucci from Miami.
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