Haiti Quake Recovery Planners Wait in Wings
The leaders of the U.S. earthquake response effort in Haiti say they expect it will be “several weeks” before the effort shifts from a first-response life- support mission to planning for recovery, but when it comes, that phase “will involve all the military and civilian subject-matter experts.”
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But a week after the Jan. 12 quake, the answer to how the international reconstruction effort will be led—or even by what country or international body—was unclear. It wasn’t exactly a turf war developing among various interests, but it was the biggest unanswered question in the room, left for resolution after the initial search-and-rescue rush fades into the slow grind of reconstruction.
“We are focusing our efforts to deliver the immediate emergency supply and distribution of humanitarian aid to the stricken people of Haiti,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Dan Allyn, deputy commander of the joint task force managing the tactical response to the disaster at a press conference on Jan. 19, as a full day passed since the last reported survivor was pulled from the rubble. “That’s the immediate priority and what we have been working on 24/7 for a week now,” he said.
“At the tactical level, obviously we are bringing in combat-heavy engineer equipment as part of the earthquake-response flow to enable the immediate clearing of roads and removal of rubble. That flow will be begin here in the next week,” said Allyn.
He said one immediate project that should commence within 48 hours is the construction of a second airstrip for C-130 operations at Jacmel, about 25 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince.
Allyn said he was sure “discussions are taking place at higher headquarters and among senior leadership of the Dept. of Defense and will take place with the government of Haiti as we move to the reconstruction phase,” he said, adding, “we are several weeks from moving with that phase.”
Tim Callaghan, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s disaster-assistance response team, said debris removal and coordination will begin much sooner and include hiring local labor to support the economy.
Among the many international organizations involved, USAID is the lead U.S. agency on the mission. But as Callaghan and Allyn repeatedly pointed out, the U.S. is supporting the Haitian government in addressing its own priorities. “There are coordination meetings with government of Haiti at 8 a.m. every morning where the prime minister articulates the priorities of Haiti,” Callaghan said. “Everything that we do is coordinated with the government....Haiti is in charge of the response.”
Bottlenecks
A week into the disaster response, though, communications, transportation and logistical bottlenecks were still impeding the response. In a press conference on Jan. 18, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, just returned from the scene, noted that the “most important issue at this time” was how to coordinate the fast, effective delivery of aid without waste. “The international community supports the United Nations to take the leading role as a coordinator,” he said. “There is no doubt and no question about that. The U.N. will continue to do that, and we will try to have a mechanism established in a more structured way,” Ki-moon said.
However, as he described how the “overwhelming situation” of bottlenecks at the airport and on the roads was...
...hampering the delivery of aid, he noted the U.S. government has been particularly helpful in assisting the Haitian government with restoring and maximizing airport services.
“The control tower has been damaged, while the runway was okay. Therefore, the United Nations is very closely coordinating with the U.S. authorities to have a smooth operation, and I am grateful that the United States government has been swiftly and effectively dealing with this in close coordination with the United Nations,” he said.
But even efficient airport operations couldn’t get around the limitations of the one runway at Toussaint L’Overture International Airport in Port-au-Prince.
A rapid-response combat team from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne command at Fort Bragg, N.C., was days behind schedule in its full deployment, partially blocked out by too few landing slots at the airport. The same problem was holding up an 85-person detachment from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 7, stationed in Gulfport, Miss., which had been ready to deploy for four days, according to Rob Mims, public affairs officer with the Naval Construction Battalion Center and 20th Seabee Readiness Group in Gulfport.
The Seabees’ primary task will be debris removal to open access to ravaged areas, although Mims said the scope could change, as personnel have been told to prepare for six months in the country. They are bringing more than 40 pieces of equipment, including dump trucks, excavators, loaders, graders, crawlers, humvees and transport trailers.
Meanwhile, a group of 12 divers from Underwater Construction Team 1 also stood ready to deploy from Navy Amphibious Base Little Creek in Norfolk, Va. The UCT 1 divers are expected to help with inspection and assessment of damaged port areas.
A Maritime Transportation System Recovery Unit, tasked with assessing damage to the port, reported that five cranes at the port were either damaged, unstable or submerged as a result of the collapse of wharfs from the quake. The port also has been compromised by submerged shipping containers, garbage and other debris in the waters.
The crew of Coast Guard cutter Oak started work on Jan. 17 marking navigation hazards, while the cutter Tahoma conducted soundings along the south pier in Port-au-Prince harbor. It was able to find passage for the Crimson Clover, a 270-foot-long barge that began landing relief supplies on Jan. 19. The Coast Guard also was conducting aerial assessments of damage to other Haitian ports, while other personnel worked to restore the Haitian Coast Guard base in Carrefour, just southwest of Port-au-Prince, as a possible supply port. The Coast Guard and Navy are providing the initial response to reopen the ports, but Coast Guard spokesman Russ Tippets said contractors may be brought in later to help rebuild.
However, a group of 800 U.S. Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Lejeune, N.C., are rolling in and deploying to areas to the south and west of Port-au-Prince, where disaster relief efforts were only beginning to reach a week after the quake. They will coordinate with a unit from Sri Lanka and, later, a unit of Canadians.
Brazil, which has a significant economic interest in the region as the source of much-needed natural gas, has a 250-person military engineering company on the ground as well. Brazil has led the U.N.’s 9,000-person stabilization force in Haiti for the past five years. The engineers had been doing road reconstruction, but since the earthquake, they have been assisting with rescue.
Conspicuously absent at the early phase of the recovery effort is any large-scale involvement of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “We have four USACE engineers out of the South Atlantic division, in Atlanta, augmenting the SOUTHCOM engineering cell in Haiti,” says Maj. Marc. D. Young, a spokesman for the Corps directorate of civil works and emergency response in Washington, D.C. “We are ready. We are just planning right now,” he says.
Contractor Pool
Although the Navy’s immediate focus is how to deploy its own personnel, the Naval Facilities Engineering...
...Command (NAVFAC) division in Norfolk, Va. It has several contracts in place with private-sector firms to support the Haiti effort if task orders are issued, according to Jim Brantley, division director for public affairs and communications for NAVFAC.
Atlantic Contingency Constructors, LLC, Virginia Beach, Va., Fluor Intercontinental Inc., Greenville, S.C., and URS-IAP LLC, Washington, D.C., hold a $1-billion global contingency construction contract with NAVFAC. It includes providing engineering and construction services for disaster recovery.
Atlantic Contingency Constructors is a partnership of The Shaw Group, Baton Rouge, La., AECOM Technology Corp., Los Angeles, and PAE Government Services, Arlington, Va. URS-IAP is a joint venture of URS Corp., San Francisco, and IAP Worldwide Services, Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Another possible contract vehicle is the Global Service Contingency Contract, which provides short-term facilities support services with incidental construction in response to natural disasters. That contract is held by Contingency Response Services LLC, a partnership of DynCorp International, Fort Worth, Parsons Corp., Pasadena, Calif., and PWC Logistics, which is now part of Houston-based Agility Project Logistics.
Any shift to private contracting will bring a host of new issues to the table, including project awards, controls and governance, which will invariably reference reconstruction work in Iraq for lessons learned. Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, says the challenges that lie ahead are formidable, but some of what was learned in Iraq could apply.
First and foremost is restoring order and security. “Restoring the rule of law quickly and maintaining it is the sine qua non of ensuring that relief and reconstruction activities can proceed promptly,” Bowen advises.
Once the reconstruction effort has begun, integration between agencies will be essential. “There’s going to be a variety of agencies operating in Haiti delivering aid, but ensuring that there is integration in the provision of that aid and adequate oversight of the contracts that will follow is essential for the efficient use of taxpayer dollars,” Bowen says.
The special inspector general’s office plans to release a report in a few weeks that will propose the creation of a U.S. office for contingency operations. “Such an office would clearly be helpful in situations like Haiti,” he says.
Going Forward
Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity and the Open Architecture Network, is one who is beginning to plan long-term. He laid out a detailed scheme, including a probable time line for an architectural and construction response, in a blog on Jan. 17.
The first stage of pre-planning assessments and damage analysis is already under way and will run for a year, Sinclair says. Establishing a community resource center and reconstruction studio should happen in one to three...
...months. The work of sorting out land tenure and building ownership may be able to begin in about six months but could take as long as five years. Meanwhile, transitional shelters, health clinics, schools, hospitals and community and civic structures will need to start construction within six to nine months, with construction of permanent housing ongoing for one to five years.
Donations Multiply
At least one U.S. construction-firm top executive was able to enter Haiti on Jan. 17 to assist medical professionals with power supply and logistics in reaching and treating the injured.
James S. Ansara, chairman and founder of Boston-based Shawmut Design & Construction, is assisting the efforts of Partners in Health, a non-profit organization, also in Boston, that had already been providing medical assistance in Haiti for 25 years. He accompanied PIH-sponsored medical teams to Port-au-Prince, where he is working to provide power to operating rooms and mobile treatment centers, says Tom Gomat, Shawmut CEO. “The logistics are difficult, but [the volunteers] are making progress,” he says.
Shawmut also helped obtain anesthesia equipment from hospitals in Boston that is being flown into the region by the U.S. Air Force. Earlier, the company helped organize transportation for trauma surgeons to fly to Haiti in a plane donated by a client, who Ansara did not name.
Shawmut, ranked No. 73 on ENR’s list of the Top 400 Contractors, with $872.3 million in 2008 building construction revenue, had been supporting PIH’s plan to build a new hospital in Port-au-Prince, before the quake, using the donated time of its estimators, architects and engineers, says Ansara. He notes that the firm, which was sold to its employees in 2006, employs a number of Haitians in Boston, one as a field superintendent.
Also now in Haiti, with Ansara and PIH personnel, is Christopher Strock, a Ph.D. construction student at Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, who recently supervised completion of a pro bono bridge project in a rural part of the country and had been set to work on the new PIH hospital.
Ansara says he has made a personal pledge to match donations up to $1 million for a new relief fund, called the Haiti Fund, which is being administered through the Boston Foundation, based in that city.
Shawmut is matching all charitable contributions from its own employees and tapping its network of suppliers, subcontractors and competitors to contribute, says Gomat. “I’ve sent e-mails to 42,000 contacts,” he says. About 25% of the fund’s total will fund current relief efforts, but the remainder will be used to facilitate planning and construction of needed infrastructure over the long-term, according to Ansara.
Other industry firms and organizations are marshalling fund-raising. The Bechtel Group Foundation has pledged an immediate $100,000 gift to the American Red Cross to support its on-the-ground relief efforts. It is matching employee gifts on a dollar-for-dollar basis up to $1,000 per person, up to a total of $400,000.