Haiti quake upends lives already hit by poverty
PORT DE PAIX: Quakehit PortdePaix was back to its daily routines on Monday but in poor neighbourhoods like l’Hopital, on a steep hill that looks out to the sea beyond the Haitian city, people’s troubles are just beginning.
Nearly all the flimsily built houses along the mudslicked corridor that runs up the hill through L’Hopital show damage from Saturday’s 5.9 magnitude quake.
“When a quake comes, there is always damage and losses,” says Geraldo Mesadieu as he stands outside the oneroom home he shares with his wife and four children.
Not one of the room’s four walls is intact.
During the quake, Mesadieu’s 20yearold son Joel, his youngest, was seized by panic and ran down the hillside.
He stumbled and fell onto a sharp metal object and was killed – one of 15 deaths from the quake.
“I should have gone to live some place else because the hillside is too steep here.
“I built a small wall below to support it a bit, but as you can see, all the walls are cracked,” he said.
“The problem is, down below, the land is too expensive,” he said as he looked out to the sea.
In a nation where building standards are not respected, and urban planning nonexistent, a medium intensity quake is enough to cause death and material damage.
Saddened by the death of her neighbour, Limita Axius returned Monday to her home, but just for a change of clothes.
“I can’t sleep here with the cracks in the walls. I’m sleeping in a church now but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to,” said Axius, who is 23.
“To go somewhere else to live I need money, so I have to return here, even if it is dangerous,” she said.