Haiti�s debris - 1,000 trucks for 1,000 days to move it

posted on: Feb 24 2010 8:41 by Royston. Viewed 583 times.


The earthquake left Haiti�s capital, Port-au-Prince, with millions of cubic meters of rubble and to clear them will fill a thousand trucks a day for a thousand days, said Canadian General Nicolas Matern, deputy commander of the Joint Task Force in the devastated country.

Matern said the Jan 12 earthquake created between 20 and 25 million cubic meters of debris.
"Enough to fill five Superdomes" he said, referring to American stadium in New Orleans that housed thousands of people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Mountains of debris are blocking drains and canals in and around Port au Prince, crucial in the prevention of flooding when heavy rains begin in May.

Thousands of people made homeless by the quake are living in 19 camps in low lying areas and would be at serious risk from flooding.

Matern said housing demand is so urgent before the start of the rainy season that debris removal will focus on the need for new refugee camps to ease overcrowding in existing ones.

Meanwhile, U.S. Colonel Gregory Kane said Monday that there are now enough trucks in the country and in the neighboring Dominican Republic to remove the debris . Kane agreed that the drains and canals will have to be unblocked quickly before the rains come.

Teams of men and women are engaged in shovelling the debris at the moment while they wait for heavy equipment to arrive. This effort has more benefit to the workers, who earn US$5 a day, than to the reduction of debris but is a welcome humanitarian gesture.

Meanwhile the United nations confirmed that residents of Port au Prince continue to leave the city in droves and just in the last week, 80,000 people moved from there to other regions.

Nearly 600,000 people in total have left the Haitian capital since the earthquake of January 12. The continuing rumbles from aftershocks keep everyone afraid of more disasters.

Spokeswoman for the Office of Humanitarian aid in Geneva, Elisabeth Byrs, also revealed that 160,000 people are on the border with the Dominican Republic.

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