Earth Equity News

Haiti Devastated by 4 Storms in Succession. By Jason Beaubien, NPR, September 13, 2008, audio and text. "Relief operations continue for the hundreds of thousands of people affected by two tropical storms and two hurricanes in the last month. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed and large parts of Haiti remain cut off from the rest of the country... This storm season has been a huge setback for farmers here... Haiti is already heavily dependent on food imports -- more than half of Haiti's food comes from abroad. Rising global food prices earlier this year sparked riots in the country and led to the prime minister's ouster. With the crop losses from these most recent storms, Haiti will have little choice but to remain heavily dependent on food imports for at least another year... The storms also have delayed the opening of schools by a month. Roads, bridges and other infrastructure have been wiped out... 'It's not often that a country can be hit by four tropical storms successively,' says Abel Nazier, the deputy coordinator for Recent Disaster Management at the Haitian Interior Ministry... Nazier says the government does have a plan for getting people back in to their homes, but he says that part of the response won't begin for another six months. Right now, he says, the government is focused on providing emergency relief such as water and food to the thousands and thousands of Haitians who lost their homes in the storms."