Global News Journal

Haiti: The journalists behind the story

The story:  When a massive earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, Reuters journalists raced to the devastated capital of Port-au-Prince. While Reuters has no bureau in Haiti, we have established long-time freelancers to help on our coverage and we go on assignment there regularly for major stories. Logistics post-earthquake became a challenge as commercial flights into the city were canceled and some of our journalists made their way into the Dominican Republic’s Santo Domingo airport and then journeyed several hours by car to cross the border into Haiti.

The journalists:  As you’d expect, our journalists reported on the devastation and witnessed the thousands of dead bodies and the suffering of many more. Behind the scenes, reporting conditions were rough as one of our reporter’s flak jacket and helmet for safety were taken by border guards. Communications was spotty even with satellite phones. Our team was split for the first week between the airport and the Hotel Villa Creole. While the hotel was mostly habitable, for aftershock fears that were later realized, most visitors and journalists chose the safer quarters of sleeping in the open near the hotel’s swimming pool.

Some of the in-person accounts from our team who first hit the ground can be found here, here and here.

Covering a major disaster is a great team effort and the team who first rotated in included: Carlos Barria, Catherine Bremer, Tom Brown, Manuel Carrillo, Andy Cawthorne, Oliver Ellrodt, Adam Entous, Alberto Fajardo, Debbie Gembara, Ben Gruber, Laurent Hamida, Gershon Peaks, Wolfgang Rattay, Carlos Rawlins, Jorge Silva, Carlos Valdez, Jean Valmy, Herbert Villarraga and Omar Younis.

News editors on the story included  Pascal Fletcher, Marie Frail, Gary Hershorn, Frances Kerry, Kieran Murray and David Storey.

Freelancers on the ground include:  Ricardo Dias, Jesus Frias, Joseph Guyler Delva, Evan Lambert, Eduardo Munoz, Herlen Santana, Ricardo Silva-Santi-Esteban, and Kena Betancur,

While there were plenty of bylines and other credits to our text stories, pictures, live TV shots and video, there was plenty of maneuvering behind the scenes as well. Saul Hudson and Alistair Bell hosted twice daily operational and logistics calls, Larry Rubenstein hired security to help protect our team and made sure people had food, Mike Berrigan made sure people had working equipment and Molly Skipper helped track our journalist movements. Thanks to Pascal, Mike and others who literally helped pay for our coverage by loaning thousands of dollars and euros to journalists headed into Haiti. Amid a disaster, credit cards are useless and ATMs won’t work.

Europe draws inspiration from U.S. Peace Corps

Much criticism has been heaped on the European Union — the vast majority of it by its own member states — for not being seen to do enough to help Haiti after the Caribbean state’s earthquake. 

Never mind the fact EU states and the European Commission have promised a combined 400 million euros  ($575 million) in aid and long-term reconstruction. In public relations terms, the sums have all but been eclipsed by images, beamed around the world, of  volunteer U.S. firemen pulling victims from the rubble, and emergency aid workers from the likes of Israel and Brazil running much-needed field hospitals.

But an interesting new proposal from Greece promises to change the way the European Union operates and is perceived in the world’s most-needy countries, especially at times of crisis.

Drawing a leaf from the U.S. Peace Corps programme, the overseas volunteer organisation established by President Kennedy in 1961, Greece wants to create a European Volunteer Corps that would send thousands of young Europeans abroad to do humanitarian work for a couple of years.

“We need to provide European citizens, and particularly our younger generation, with a framework to actively participate in projects related to  humanitarian and development aid, civil protection and emergency relief assistance,” Greece said in a document circulated in Brussels this week to promote the idea.

Such a corps would channel young people’s energy “into activities that serve the common interest and reinforce their sense of belonging to a common European family of values, but of action as well”.

For countries such as Greece, with high and rising joblessness and an often restive youth, it might also provide an opportunity to keep young and active minds busy in the frequently restless years between formal education and long-term employment.

Haiti’s plea: “We need help”

-This is a guest post from Rigoberto Giron, who is heading up CARE’s emergency response efforts in Haiti from CARE HQ in Atlanta. Any opinions expressed are his own.-

Just outside of CARE’s offices in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, hundreds of newly homeless people are camped out in a public square. During the day, they wait patiently in the scorching sun. But at night, when hunger and thirst overtake them, groups of people can be heard clapping and chanting. Daybreak reveals new banners that read, in English and Creole, “We need help!”

No message could be truer.

Tens of thousands of people now live in the rubble-filled streets and cramped public spaces around Haiti’s capital city. Water mains are broken and people are washing clothes in the gutters. There also have been concerns about bottlenecks and food, shelter and clean water not reaching the people who so desperately need it.

The logistical challenges are daunting. The airport and sea port have been damaged, electricity has been cut off, and most roads are damaged. Gas supplies are low. There is an urgent need for aircraft fuel in order to continue humanitarian flights. And security issues hamper aid efforts.

Yet, amid the death and destruction, we have seen the Haitian people band together. The same people saying “we need help” are helping each other. Families who’ve lost everything are teaming up with emergency crews and aid workers to pull survivors from the rubble. CARE’s staff have been inspired by women who, after just one lesson in water purification, spread the lifesaving technique to others.

CARE doesn’t simply deliver millions of liters of clean water to those suffering in the aftermath of this country’s worst disaster. Those coached on how to use water-purification packets have turned into coaches themselves.

United Nations confronts life and death in Haiti

Everybody who knew French Canadian U.N. staffer Alexandra Duguay loved her. She was attractive, energetic and extremely intelligent. I got to know her well when she worked behind the media counter at U.N. headquarters. She was always eager to make sure we reporters had the latest resolutions, U.N. reports and speeches. And in the evening she enjoyed a glass of wine or beer at the Delegates Lounge. But she was bored with her job and wanted more adventure. One morning last spring she had an unusual twinkle in her eye. I asked her if something was up and she said yes. “I’m going to Haiti.” A few months later she had her going-away party at the U.N. Correspondents Association room. She and her boyfriend prepared for their imminent deployment to Haiti, where Alex was to be a spokeswoman and media coordinator for U.N. operations in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation.

Alex quickly settled into her exciting new job. Late last year she emailed me an update of life in Port-au-Prince: “Even though it’s a bit of a s****y place, I can’t complain. I just spend too much time between my house and my hotel room, a.k.a. office. Yeah, we have peacocks as pets … Haitians are nuts. Lovely but nuts.”

Alex, 31, was one of dozens of U.N. workers who died after the peacekeeping mission’s headquarters in Haiti and other buildings collapsed during an earthquake on January 12. It was the biggest loss of life during a single event in the world body’s 65-year history.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid tribute to the dead U.N. staffers a few days later when he visited the ruins of the 5-story Christopher Hotel, where the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) had its offices, saying that he lacked the words to express his sorrow. Shortly after he left the site, where the stench of death hung thick in the air, a U.S. search-and-rescue team pulled a Danish man out of the rubble, dehydrated after five days without water or food, but alive and conscious.

“I am very glad that it was a great sign of hope,” Ban told reporters later. “Saving lives is our first priority and I hope that we see more such miracles.”

There were a few other stories of miraculous survival. Imran Gardner, the 5-month-old son of U.N staffers in Haiti, Esra and William Gardner, was rescued from under the rubble of their home by unidentified Haitians.

Sadly, such survival stories were the exception. As many as 200,000 people are believed to have died in the earthquake and some of their bodies may never be recovered. A group of containers at the U.N. logistics base at the Port-au-Prince airport, which several U.N. officials insisted was not refrigerated, has become an unofficial U.N. morgue.

from Tales from the Trail:

Haiti’s “Wizard-of-Oz” president – nowhere to be seen

There's something weirdly symbolic in the sight of thousands of homeless Haitians massed in a sprawling tent city bang in front of the collapsed icing-sugar white presidential palace.   They're here because it's the biggest open space in the capital, but it somehow looks like an appeal for President Rene Preval to come out and speak to his people and reassure them that he stands behind them, that together the country will get through the catastrophe caused by Tuesday's earthquake.   Four days after Tuesday's earthquake the Haitian flag that once fluttered above the National Palace still lies in a wilted heap over the toppled white ruin. In the park opposite, men and women strip to their underpants to bathe in a large fountain and scrub their clothes. The hang their laundry on the park rails.   Garbage is scattered everywhere and the smell of urine and excrement is getting worse.   Far from coming to address them, Preval is holed up in the judicial police headquarters near the airport, mumbling that he can't do much when half the government's offices are destroyed and he doesn't even have a cell phone signal.   Meanwhile, the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who lost their homes and families have been left to fend for themselves, with no food handouts and no proper medical treatment. In many cases, they are seriously injured.      Foreign rescue workers are battling round the clock digging for survivors. But in the absence of a working government, the disaster relief teams who are supposed to be delivering food, latrines and medical supplies are still mostly dithering about sorting out logistics.   From the shambles outside the presidential palace, you wonder if anybody is in charge at all.   "The country is not working right now. It's not even eating," remarked Louis Widlyne, one of the countless people sleeping on a sheet that marks out his living quarters in the park.   A police officer called Joe was more sympathetic. He had received no orders since Tuesday's disaster, but decided on his own on Saturday that it was time to go back on the beat.      "Preval should have come and spoken to his people, but he hasn't," he said. "He is like that. It's just the kind of president he is." 

Click here for more coverage of the Haiti earthquake.

from Tales from the Trail:

Haiti’s forgotten bodies

As a ragtag group of Haitian rescue workers tried to dig a dead man from underneath a collapsed telecoms company building in Port-au-Prince this week, the firm's owner told me how the 40-year-old security guard had been a cherished employee.   Only a short time before, Tarek el Bakri, a Lebanese businessman who lived at the top of the now perilously slanted building, had paid for the funeral of the man's grandson, so much was he part of the family. Now he was paying workers to free his corpse.   The workers yelled and squabbled about how best to get at him -- only his arm, shoulder and head were visible -- without causing the structure, which had desks sandwiched between its layers, and a car crushed underneath, to collapse further.   A water mains had burst, causing a small fountain to spray out near the dead man's head. At one point an excavator churned toward the site, but the workers waved it away.   The man had three children, el Bakri told me. He was crushed along with two cleaning staff. In all, Bakri lost 11 employees in offices across the city, as well as his own home.   He said he was the only one pushing for the bodies to be pulled out. He hadn't heard anything from city officials about what he should do. "In any other country people would gather together to help each other," he said. "Here you are on your own. Nobody cares."   When I returned a day later, the man's corpse was still there. His dark skin dustier than before. The fountain was still spurting.   I remembered then what el Bakri had told me: looters squeezed in to steal all the office computers and cell phone stocks well before anybody had tried to free the victims.

Reuters photos by Eduardo Munoz and Carlos Barria.

Click here for more stories on the Haiti earthquake disaster.

from Tales from the Trail:

Haiti – shutting out the cries

Last night, I slept on the floor with the cries of the wounded searing through the night air across the hills of Port-au-Prince. Every so often, there was an outbreak of wailing and shrieking, when someone died. Sometimes, prayers were sung and chanted. We are all becoming inured to the pain - I found myself longing for earplugs.

At 5 a.m. in the morning, there was an after-shock from the earthquake, one of the strongest yet. The ground shook, sending more rubble falling off the half-destroyed Hotel Villa Creole, waking up dozens of exhausted journalists, and causing more pain to the many wounded and homeless Haitians sleeping on the street outside the hotel. The few waiters still working here served us coffee, while volunteers at the impromptu hospital on our porch tried to close gashes and keep people alive.   By midday, I had visited a dozen makeshift refugee camps where no one had received a drop of water or a bite to eat from authorities or aid agencies. I found nine mass graves outside the capital, the putrid smell of piled up corpses still hanging on my T-shirt. I saw chaos at the airport where Haitians are clamoring to get out, and the world is clamoring to get aid in.   Now, after grilled chicken at the hotel (where does it keep coming from?) it is time to step over the bodies on the porch again to go and check reports of rioting downtown and burning bodies in a nearby refugee settlement. Then, it will be back to the Villa Creole to see if the water is back on for a shower in the room I share with about a dozen colleagues. Despite the large comfortable bed, no one dares sleep there because of the after-shocks. But until the water went off, it was worth the risk for a few minutes to shower and get clean.   Yesterday, the wine and beer flowed for some during dinner, though conversation was interrupted by chilling groans from over the wall. Don't take any of that flippantly  -- it is most certainly not written that way. After nearly two decades covering the trouble-spots of Latin America, Africa and elsewhere, this correspondent and most of the multitude of veteran colleagues here still find the surreal juxtapositions deeply disturbing. Everyone reacts in their own way -- some stop to help, others walk on by. But nobody is sleeping soundly, believe me.

Reuters photos by Carlos Barria and Jorge Silva

Click here for more stories on the Haiti earthquake disaster.

from Tales from the Trail:

Clinton says Haiti’s development prospects can still be good

Former President Bill Clinton, who is helping to coordinate global relief for Haiti with former President George W. Bush, says the quake-stricken country could bounce back much more quickly than people might think.

Clinton told NBC's Today show that Haiti had made it onto the path to modernization when the earthquake struck on Tuesday. But he denied claims that the devastation may have set the impoverished country's development back by half a century.

"Because they started from a low base, we can reconstitute where they are quicker than everyone thinks. I just do not agree that they've been set back 50 years," he said. "If we go back to work, we'll be all right."

Clinton, whose wife Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is at the forefront of U.S. government relief efforts, also made an impassioned plea for donations to meet the immediate needs of people thrust violently into a hellish existence. "Think how you would feel if you lost everything, you were wandering around streets at night that were all dark, you were tripping over bodies living and dead, and you didn't have water to drink or food to eat," he told CNN.

"That's why giving money now in small amounts ... even if you just have $5 or $10 to give, this is a big deal," added Clinton, who is also the U.N. special envoy to Haiti.

"They have made a decision to claim the future for the first time in my lifetime. We can do this, if we can survive the next week or two."

Photo credits: Reuters/Lucas Jackson (Bill Clinton); Reuters/U.N. handout (A Family in Port-au-Prince); Reuters/U.N. handout (Bodies of the Victims)

from Tales from the Trail:

Helping Haiti: the nightmare scenario

About the only thing that has gone right in the Haitian earthquake is the weather.

The dry, warm nights have been kind to the multitudes of homeless, injured and terrified Haitians sleeping out in streets, parks and pavements all over the nation. Not to mention the ever-growing legion of foreign rescuers, aid-workers and journalists who -- like the locals -- fear sleeping indoors because of still-rumbling aftershocks.

Apart from that, it has been a sheer nightmare for millions of Haitians, and for aid-groups wanting to help them, after the worst disaster on record in the Western hemisphere's poorest nation. No one knows the death-toll, and many bodies still lie untouched in the street, but clearly thousands, or tens of thousands, have perished. The Red Cross here estimates 45-50,000 dead, and 3 million injured and homeless.

It could not have happened to a more vulnerable nation.

Battered by storms in recent years, and still suffering from a long history of political turmoil, Haiti has struggled in the past to cope with far lesser disasters. Its government has precious few resources and the collapsed roof of the white presidential palace in downtown Port-au-Prince symbolizes its impotence. And of course many officials and policemen are too busy hunting for friends and relatives of their own, and picking through the rubble of their own homes, to turn their attention to any sort of nationwide rescue effort.

Local aid groups are decimated too. Many organizations -- including the United Nations, which has 9,000 peacekeepers here -- have suffered damage to their buildings and lost personnel, equipment and supplies. That makes it far harder for the many foreign groups piling into Haiti with lots of enthusiasm to help, but no one to work with.

U.N. staff look as stunned as the Haitians. I spoke to a group of Chilean soldiers who arrived for their tour of duty just a few days before the earthquake struck. "How unlucky was that?" one of them said, sitting on a tractor in front of a mound of rocks he was supposed to move.

Haiti earthquake: live coverage

Live coverage of the Haiti earthquake from Reuters and other sources. Reuters has not verified external content.