GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) moved its assistance to its earthquake devastated Member State, Haiti to another level with the deployment of a Tactical Mission to that country on Sunday.
On Wednesday, 13 January, less than 24 hours after the earthquake struck on 12 January, Jamaica had deployed medical personnel and security forces to Haiti as a first response. Jamaica is the sub-regional focal point in the area that includes Haiti, The Bahamas and the nearby Associate Members under the system established by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) the regional response mechanism to natural disasters.
A medical facility was quickly established by the Jamaican team, while arrangements have also been made to transport some of the injured to Jamaica for hospitalisation.
The Tactical Mission is seeking to determine the way forward in the provision of more health related services to Haiti and will provide up to date information as to the situation on the ground in Haiti and identify logistical arrangements which would facilitate the entry and accommodation of more personnel and supplies.
This crucial area of health was identified as the sector that would receive a targeted response by the Community following a meeting on Thursday evening involving CARICOM Chairman, Roosevelt Skerritt, Prime Minister of Dominica, David Thompson, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Bruce Golding, the Prime Minister of Jamaica and Edwin Carrington, Secretary-General of CARICOM. Prime Minister Golding had reported to his colleagues on meetings he had held in Haiti earlier that day with Haitian President Rene Preval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.
CARICOM assistance in the area of health includes the provision of additional medical and support personnel as well as medical and emergency supplies and security for those engaged in the provision of the services. CDEMA, in this effort, continues to work closely with the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), the Regional Security System (RSS) and the CARICOM Secretariat.
On Monday President Preval and members of his cabinet, together with Prime Ministers, Skerritt, Thompson and Golding, Hubert Ingraham, Prime Minister of The Bahamas and Patrick Manning Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and the CARICOM Secretary-General, participated in a meeting in the Dominican Republic on the crisis arising out of the earthquake. The meeting, convened by Spain in its capacity as current President of the European Union and attended by other countries and international agencies, sought to identify and resolve problems of co-ordination of the aid and relief effort in Haiti.
CARICOM leaders expressed concern over the future of tens of thousands of children who had been made orphans by the tragedy and agreed that this problem needed to be addressed urgently.
All participants acknowledged the major logistical difficulties in the situation including the almost insurmountable challenge of reaching communities outside Port-au-Prince which had also been devastated by the earthquake, and recommended ways to tackle this issue. CARICOM’s role and rapid response to the crisis came in for praise at the meeting.
January 21, 2010
caribbeannetnews
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Showing posts with label Jean-Max Bellerive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jean-Max Bellerive. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Haiti quake was nightmare waiting to happen say scientists
By Richard Ingham:
PARIS, France (AFP) -- The quake that hit Haiti on Tuesday was a killer that had massed its forces for a century and a half before unleashing them against a wretchedly poor country, turning buildings into death traps, experts said on Wednesday.
Scientists painted a tableau of horror, where natural forces, ignorance and grinding poverty had conspired to wreak a death toll tentatively estimated by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive at more than 100,000.
The 7.0-magnitude quake occurred very close to the surface near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, leaving almost no natural buffer to soften the powerful shockwave, these experts said.
"It was a very shallow earthquake, occurring at a depth of around 10 kilometers (6.2 miles)," seismologist Yann Klinger of the Institute of the Physics of the Globe (IPG) in Paris told AFP.
"Because the shock was so big and occurred at such a shallow depth, just below the city, the damage is bound to be very extensive," he said.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake occurred at 2153 GMT on Tuesday 15 kms (9.4 miles) southwest of Port-au-Prince.
It happened at a boundary where two mighty chunks of the Earth's crust, the Caribbean plate and the North America plate, rub and jostle in a sideways, east-west movement.
The USGS said the rupture occurred on the "Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system," a slow-moving fault that last unleashed a large quake in 1860. Prior major events to that were in 1770, 1761, 1751, 1684, 1673 and 1618.
Sandy Steacey, director of the Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, said the high death toll could be pinned overwhelmingly to construction.
"It's a very, very poor country without the building codes. Probably the fact that earthquakes (there) are very infrequent contributes in a way, because it's not a country that is focussed on seismic safety.
"Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breeze-block or cinder-block construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken," said Steacey.
"In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much."
French seismologist Pascal Bernard, also at the IPG, said that, given the nature of the fault, there was a "sizeable probability" that another large quake could occur in the same region within a matter of years.
Like other faults around the world, the Haitian crack is well known for domino activity, in which the release of pressure on one stretch piles on pressure in an adjoining stretch, bringing it closer to rupture.
In Haiti's case, the likeliest spot of a bust would be to the east of Tuesday's quake, Bernard said.
Asked whether another big quake was in the offing, Roger Searle, a professor of geophysics at Durham University, northeast England, said, "In the coming years, almost surely."
"We know pretty much where earthquakes occur, they've been mapped themselves and we can map faults and so on.
"The difficulty is it's very, very hard to predict when they will occur, because the network is so complex.
"It's a bit like making a pile of stones. You put more on the pile and it gets steeper and steeper and sooner or later the thing is going to collapse but you never which stone is going to do it and just where it's going to start to fail."
January 14, 2010
caribbeannetnews
PARIS, France (AFP) -- The quake that hit Haiti on Tuesday was a killer that had massed its forces for a century and a half before unleashing them against a wretchedly poor country, turning buildings into death traps, experts said on Wednesday.
Scientists painted a tableau of horror, where natural forces, ignorance and grinding poverty had conspired to wreak a death toll tentatively estimated by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive at more than 100,000.
The 7.0-magnitude quake occurred very close to the surface near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, leaving almost no natural buffer to soften the powerful shockwave, these experts said.
"It was a very shallow earthquake, occurring at a depth of around 10 kilometers (6.2 miles)," seismologist Yann Klinger of the Institute of the Physics of the Globe (IPG) in Paris told AFP.
"Because the shock was so big and occurred at such a shallow depth, just below the city, the damage is bound to be very extensive," he said.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake occurred at 2153 GMT on Tuesday 15 kms (9.4 miles) southwest of Port-au-Prince.
It happened at a boundary where two mighty chunks of the Earth's crust, the Caribbean plate and the North America plate, rub and jostle in a sideways, east-west movement.
The USGS said the rupture occurred on the "Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system," a slow-moving fault that last unleashed a large quake in 1860. Prior major events to that were in 1770, 1761, 1751, 1684, 1673 and 1618.
Sandy Steacey, director of the Environmental Science Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, said the high death toll could be pinned overwhelmingly to construction.
"It's a very, very poor country without the building codes. Probably the fact that earthquakes (there) are very infrequent contributes in a way, because it's not a country that is focussed on seismic safety.
"Looking at the pictures, essentially it looks as if (the buildings are of) breeze-block or cinder-block construction, and what you need in an earthquake zone is metal bars that connect the blocks so that they stay together when they get shaken," said Steacey.
"In a wealthy country with good seismic building codes that are enforced, you would have some damage, but not very much."
French seismologist Pascal Bernard, also at the IPG, said that, given the nature of the fault, there was a "sizeable probability" that another large quake could occur in the same region within a matter of years.
Like other faults around the world, the Haitian crack is well known for domino activity, in which the release of pressure on one stretch piles on pressure in an adjoining stretch, bringing it closer to rupture.
In Haiti's case, the likeliest spot of a bust would be to the east of Tuesday's quake, Bernard said.
Asked whether another big quake was in the offing, Roger Searle, a professor of geophysics at Durham University, northeast England, said, "In the coming years, almost surely."
"We know pretty much where earthquakes occur, they've been mapped themselves and we can map faults and so on.
"The difficulty is it's very, very hard to predict when they will occur, because the network is so complex.
"It's a bit like making a pile of stones. You put more on the pile and it gets steeper and steeper and sooner or later the thing is going to collapse but you never which stone is going to do it and just where it's going to start to fail."
January 14, 2010
caribbeannetnews
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Newly selected Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive vows to further Haiti's pro-business stance
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, November 11, 2009 - Newly selected Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has vowed to further Haiti's pro-business stance, as the country looks to capitalise on the domestic and international outpouring of business interests looking at investment opportunities in Haiti. That's according to the newly-formed Haitian Economic Development Foundation.
And President Youri Mevs says the business community is pleased with Bellerive's focus on continuing to further the pro-business direction encouraged by President René Préval.
"Humanitarian assistance to our country is indeed crucial, but expansion of the business sector in order to create jobs is the long-term solution that will most impact the future of our people," Mevs said.
Haiti has recently seen an up-swell in both domestic and international investments, with organisations such as Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines increasing their visibility on the island and announcements from local major enterprises such as WIN Group, which in coordination with the Soros Economic Development Fund, plans to build a US$45 million new Free Zone.
The capital was also recently the host of a conference organised by the Inter-American Development Bank, aimed at encouraging investment in the garment, agricultural and energy sectors. The conference was attended by hundreds of potential investors, including companies of the stature of Gap, Levi Strauss and American Eagle Outfitters.
A major catalyst to this activity has been the involvement of US President Bill Clinton, whose tireless work as the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti has not only brought awareness to the country's plight, but has manifested itself in actual investments.
"We believe that the opportunity before us with the international community as it relates to investment in Haiti is unprecedented," Mevs said.
"We want to let the world know that Haiti is truly open for business."
The Haitian Economic Development Foundation was designed to foster economic growth throughout Haiti. It is comprised of some of the nation's most influential enterprises and individuals, with the singular goal of attracting and fostering business in Haiti.
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