In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, it seemed as
if the city of Port-au-Prince had been completely destroyed. There was talk of
relocating the capital or of bulldozing large swaths to make way for new
construction. As the rubble began to be cleared, it became clear that for each
building that was severely damaged, there was another with only slight damage
and a third that was basically untouched.
I brought Dr. Kit Miyamoto of Miyamoto International,
one of the top seismic engineering companies in the world, to Haiti a week
after the earthquake to help with the early response. Initially Kit focused on
the main government buildings including the National Palace and the different
Ministry offices as well as the main private sector buildings including the
hotels and factories. PADF had Kit train two engineers to evaluate the houses
used by all of PADF’s staff in an effort to help them to rebuild. As we began
doing these assessments, it became clear that many people were sleeping under
tarps not because their house was actually unsafe, but because they were afraid
that it was. We realized that we could get large numbers of people out of camps
and tents and back into their homes if we could convince them that their house
was safe.
We had been working closely with the
Ministry of Public Works (known by its French Acronym of MTPTC) and proposed to
them the possibility of conducting a detailed assessment of the buildings that
had been impacted by the earthquake. The Ministry of Public Works embraced the
idea. Miyamoto brought in the United Nations Operations (UNOPS) with funding
from the World Bank, and PADF obtained funding from the United States Office of
Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA—part of the United States Agency for
International Development—USAID).
UNOPS obtained their funding first and set up the basic
operations. They established the basic infrastructure that was used throughout
the program including the use of GPS-enabled PDAs as data collectors and the
central database.
Miyamoto developed a slightly modified version of the ATC20
form, the standard form used in California to rapidly assess earthquake damage,
for use in Haiti. They then began training Haitian engineers to conduct the
evaluation. The trained engineers were equipped with a PDA and sent in groups
to completely canvas a neighborhood. At each structure, the engineer would use
the PDA to take a picture of the building and the GPS coordinates. They then
inspected the building, going through every room, and completed a short
questionnaire on the building directly on the PDA. At the end of the
inspection, each building was spray-painted with a highly visible tag that
indicated whether the building was safe for use (“green-tagged”), damaged, but
stable (“yellow-tagged”) or unstable (“red tagged”). Each engineer was able to
inspect an average of 10 structures a day. At the end of each day, the data was
downloaded directly into the central database.
Initially, owners were reluctant to allow the engineers into
their homes and were suspicious of the program. PADF worked closely with its
partners in the poor urban areas and had to convince the people in their
neighborhoods to trust in the program. As the program grew and became better
known, owners began seeking out the engineers and asking for advice.
Another important development as the program progressed was
that the Haitian inspectors became very familiar with the different types of
damage caused by the earthquake and the importance of better construction
techniques.
Through this program, over 400,000 structures were
tagged—nearly every building in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area that was
impacted by the earthquake. The assessment showed that 53% of the houses were
safe for use (green-tagged), 26% needed minor repairs to be made useable
(yellow), and only 24% were unstable and needed either major repairs or to be
demolished and rebuilt (red).
One of the striking points that the assessment brought to
light was how widespread the damage was. Rather than having a core area of red
tagged houses surrounded by rings of yellow tagged and then green tagged
houses, nearly every neighborhood is a mixture of green, yellow, and red tagged
buildings. Furthermore, through an analysis of the levels of damage suffered by
the different types of buildings, we found that residential buildings, schools,
and churches were the hardest hit and commercial buildings fared best.
The final map showing the distribution of the green, yellow, and red tagged houses.
Taken together, these points reinforce the conclusion that
the poor quality of construction in Haiti was the main cause of the widespread
building failures.
The most striking impact of the assessment was its role in
helping people to return to their green-tagged homes. The inspectors reported
that before the assessment, roughly half of the houses that became green-tagged
had been occupied. After the house was green-tagged, occupancy jumped to 80%
with most unoccupied houses being in neighborhoods that had predominantly
yellow and red tagged houses.