Well-planned government strategies can help societies recover from catastrophic natural disasters and prevent the consequent related problems, a speaker said at Harvard University in relating his experience with the Haiti earthquake recovery effort.
Dr. Edward Blakely, former Executive Directory for Recovery Management for New Orleans, lectured on urban disaster recovery strategies and crisis leadership to about 20 people in a discussion hosted by the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Blakely used examples from Hurricane Katrina to demonstrate how a society should recover from such disastrous occurrences, now including the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, if they want to be prepared for and alleviate future consequences.
Blakely first emphasized the importance of engineering. He said political figures often make promises of rebuilding without really understanding how the rebuilding process works.
“We need to delay building in the present in order to obtain long-term goals for the future,” he said. “Recovery is very different from emergency assistance.”
Blakely said that before the Haitian government begins rebuilding, it should to work on a plan involving the three stages of the rebuilding process &- rescue, emergency aid and recovery.
“Political forces are trying to recover while they are still bringing people out from under buildings,” he said.
Blakely said the main goal should be to start with the future, not the past. He suggested that Haiti take its time coming up with a long-term plan, instead of just a quick fix that is likely to fail in the short term and cause future issues.
“Lots of patches have been put on, and those patches are going to break,” he said.
Blakely said he believes Haiti should follow the basic principles of recovery, which aregaining an equitable and speedy recovery, restoring utilities and levees, creating an efficient and effective government and ensuring integrity and transparency within the government.
Because of Haiti’s history of corruption, Blakely believes there is a much stronger need to build stronger neighborhoods and lasting communities that trust each other.
“People building together have a better physical, social and security base than if someone did it for them,” he said.
Blakely referred to the concept of “self-help housing’, in which neighborhoods rebuild themselves together into groups of six families. Families do not move into their own homes until the entire group has finished building. This, in turn, would make them closer and dependent on each other, he said.
“It’s not just building houses, it’s building communities,” Blakely said.
Blakely’s final principle in recovery, he said, was a full and fair compensation for property owners who cannot rebuild on their land.
“It is not possible at this stage to have a safe building if you don’t build it in a safe place,” he said.
He encouraged anyone wanting to get involved to start planning how they would like to help in the disaster relief.
Emerson College freshman Christina Reinwald said the whole world should be providing relief efforts, but the U.S. should still focus on domestic concerns.
“We have occupied Haiti multiple times before,” she said. “But really it should be an international effort. We should do our part to help, but also remember that we do have problems back home.”
Ashley Zohn, a leader of the Crisis Management Professional Interest Council at the Kennedy School, said Americans have a responsibility to contribute in the Haitian recovery effort.
“Those who have the resources and the ability should be involved in some way,” Zohn said.
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