The country is facing a slow reconstruction plan, struggling with poverty, The Atlantic informs us that "more than 550,000 people still live in precarious condition in the dirty and dangerous encompments throughout the Haitian capital." Recovery takes time, in particular when the country is confronting with severe political and economical issues. What these photos show is the slowly reconstruction of the country, precarious temporary tents, and victims left behind in chaos.
Petionville, a suburb erected in the hills east, more than 300 meters higher than Port-au-Prince at sea level near Port-au-Prince, with a population of 283,052. This city is a wealthier part of Haiti housing many multiracial Haitians. Living patterns are incomparable with surrounding informal cities. The city houses embassies, and international organisations, a golf club, and so forth. Population of wealthy Petionville seemed to have lived in a "gated-community" with terraces, fences and hedges, doors, roofs, garden and luxurious cars. It has been reported that the city has been largely unaffected by the earthquake.
In the suburbs of Petionville densely and disorderly expanding populated slums, Nerette, Cité Soleil, Matissante, Peguy Ville. Here living patterns contrast with Petionville: makeshift clusters of houses in concrete, rebar, and crossed fingers. Many remain incomplete; some without walls. Danger is everywhere such as trash, debris slugs, waste, electric wires, and so forth. Unsurprisingly, living conditions, and health care are precarious, if not dire, generating poverty, illiteracy, disease, and gang warfare. Haiti's urban systems deserve many books.
Port-au-Prince has been severely struck by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on January 12th, 2010 destroying many buildings.
The former golf club, also known as Club de Pétion-ville Golf, now, serves as a emergency settlement terrain for 50,000 to 90,000 Haitians. Two places, Place Boyer and Place St. Pierre, have been transformed into tent cities, as well.
Port-au-Prince, capital of Haiti, with a population of, 897,859 (before the eathquake. The Metropolitan Area estimated a population of 2,509,939) for an area of 36.04 sq. km. and density of 24,912.8 pp/sq. km, is also transformed into a vast squadely-resettlement place such as The Champ de Mars, now, serving as a multi-section tent city.
Temporary housing consist of shelter-by-homemade-shelter-type of housing providing basic amenities for the evacuees. Many shops and services have been transformed by owners and dwellers to respond to urgent needs.
One of the selected photos, below, shows the disorderly expanding popular shantytowns,— precarious houses under and above each other —, occupying valleys near Petionville.
The basic daily challenge has dramatic impacts on the dwellers who are facing with cholera, water shortage, and other critical issues — open defecation areas for the camp, crimes…
And so on. The following abstract is part of Alan Taylor's article.
Two years ago tomorrow, January 12, a catastrophic 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, leveling thousands of structures and killing hundreds of thousands of people. Haiti, already an impoverished nation, appears in many ways to have barely started recovery 24 months later, despite more than $2 billion in foreign aid. So many homes were destroyed that temporary tent cities hastly set up throughout Port-au-Prince have begun to appear permanent — more than 550,000 people still live in the dirty and dangerous encampments throughout the Haitian capital. School are being rebuilt, and some residents are now beginning to move out of the encompments, rediscovering a sense of community. But jobs and a sense of security remain elusive.
Below a selection among the 42 photos that complete Taylor's article.
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. Credit photo: AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa. Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> The earthquake-damaged National Palace is seen from the Fort Nationale neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on November 23, 2011. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. Credit photo: AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery. Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> A couple stands on the balcony of their home overlooking a densely populated neighborhood near Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 28, 2011. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, Alan Taylor. Credit photo: AP Photo/ Dieu Nalio Chery). Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> A girl walks past an abandoned helicopter at a camp set up for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake, in what used to be an airstrip in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on January 4, 2012. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery. Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> A boy runs past a camp for people affected by the January 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, on October 5, 2011. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. Credit photo: AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery. Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> Mamoune Destin, 33, wife of Meristin Florival, stands in their tent at the Beaubin camp for people displaced by the powerful 2010 earthquake in Petionville, on January 1, 2012. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. Credit Photo: Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images). Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> A Haitian woman sits in a sent city near Port-au-Prince, on January 10, 2012. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. Credit photo: AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery. Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> An orphanage under construction in Grand Goave, Haiti, viewed on December 21, 2011. Massachusetts home builder Leonard Gengel's family is opening an orphanage in honor of his daughter Britney, a 19-year-old college sophomore whose last text message to her family before she died in the 2010 earthquake said that she wanted to open an orphanage in Haiti. With her last text message in mind, Gengel's family is now making in their mission to carry out her dream and aid children in this devastated island nation. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. Credit photo: Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Iamges. Originally appeared on The Atlantic City. —> A Haitian man sells used shoes in Port-au-Prince amidst earthquake damage on January 9, 2012. According to the UN some 50 perrcent of the rubble left by the January 12, 2010 earthquake still litters the Haitian capital. |
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| Haiti: 2 Years After the Quake, © Alan Taylor. Credit Photo: AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa. Originally appeared on The Atlantic. —> Two men play cards in a house that was destroyed by the earthquake in the Fort Nationale neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, on November 23, 2011. An ambitious reconstruction panel, co-chaired former U.S. President Bill Clinton, was created three months after the January 2010 to coordinate efforts to rebuild Haiti after the quake destroyed much of the capital and surrounding area, throwing more than a million homeless into huge, squalid resettlement camps. Almost two years after an earthquake devastated Haiti, less than half the $4.6 billion in pledged aid has been distributed and political squabbling is threatening to bringing a coordinated reconstruction efforts to an abrupt halt. |
More photos and source: The Atlantic.
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