More than two months after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake demolished much of Haiti’s capitol city of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, Haitian officials continue to struggle with critical needs, such as providing housing, sanitation and food and water for displaced people. Rob Olshansky, a professor of urban and regional planning, recently visited Port-au-Prince as a member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s reconnaissance team, part of its Learning from Earthquakes Program funded by the National Science Foundation. Olshansky, who studies how cities rebuild after disasters and is a co-author of the book “Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans” (American Planning Association, 2010), discussed the Haitian recovery efforts and disaster planning with News Bureau Arts Editor Sharita Forrest.
What did your group do during your week in Haiti?
Four of us on the team (which included Amr Elnashai, the director of the Mid-America Earthquake Center at the U. of I.) captured the social science, urban planning and policy aspects of the disaster, such as how the social and economic systems and the various actors – individuals, neighborhood organizations, people living in camps, street vendors, small/local/national/ international
non-governmental organizations, the United Nations, the national government – were functioning, the current status of housing and livelihoods, and official recovery plans.
We met with high-level officials in charge of the recovery planning. We visited four neighborhoods that were the hardest hit, took photographs and talked to people about how the community was operating, the critical problems, and what they needed. We talked to people in the camps, to street vendors, with the relief agency Oxfam International and with the Episcopal Church, which operates hundreds of schools and churches in Haiti.
What are some of the critical issues in Haiti right now?
Recovery after disaster centers on two things: recovering housing and livelihoods. We asked Haitians what they wanted from their local governments, and unanimously it was jobs. Right now, they’re paying local people to clear rubble by hand. When they bring in heavy equipment, I hope that they’ll train local people to use it. The residents need money for food and water and, in the longer run, Haiti needs money for development agencies to give people job skills.
How can municipalities prepare for such disasters?
One way is to have a pre-disaster recovery plan that lays out the roles of the various entities, and makes sure everybody knows their responsibilities, so they don’t have to invent it on the fly. Los Angeles had one in place in time for the 1994 earthquake. The state of Florida is requiring all communities in the most hazardous locations to have them now.
But at a minimum, cities should have plans that describe their vision for the future. With plans and planning institutions in place, cities are better prepared for any unexpected crisis. The City of Champaign and the city of Urbana both have such plans and institutions. If a big tornado struck, we would know what things we wanted to rebuild the same way and what things to do differently. Having adequate administrative capacity for this is a prerequisite as well.
In “Clear as Mud,” we tried to describe the long and complicated process of recovery. Cities are built by many entities over many years, and it is no simple matter to rebuild them in a short amount of time. There’s continual tension between the need to rebuild quickly and to rebuild as thoughtfully as possible. Leadership, coordination and obtaining money are key. Government’s role in recovery efforts is to facilitate getting money to the various actors, provide technical assistance, create information systems to coordinate efforts, plan effective spending, and not get in the way.
What are some of the key issues that need to be addressed in pre-disaster recovery plans?
Debris removal, temporary housing (and land for sites), and policies regarding whether buildings that don’t conform to current zoning can be rebuilt in the same location. Those are really the toughest issues, and if you can work those out and designate the administrative responsibilities for them in a pre-disaster recovery plan, it makes things a lot easier.
Hazard mitigation plans – which define hazards and associated risk-reduction strategies – are also important, and most communities in the U.S. have been required to develop them over the past decade. Disasters – floods, earthquakes, tornados – will recur in the same places. The period following a disaster is the best time to mitigate for the next event because you’re constructing new buildings, and people are aware of the dangers.
A year ago, if you had told people in Port au Prince that there were some simple and inexpensive ways to make their buildings stronger, they would have said, ‘That’s nice, but they’re fine the way they are.’ Now, they are hungry for that type of information and are more than happy to do it.
How well have such plans worked for Los Angeles and other cities?
What really worked well about L.A.’s plan was that the various agencies knew their responsibilities and swung into action immediately. They did a lot of very creative and innovative things, and most reconstruction was done within a couple of years. The 1994 earthquake wasn’t catastrophic, but in dollar value it was the most expensive disaster in U.S. history – even accounting for inflation – up until Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005.
