The epicenter of the earthquake was in Léogâne, about 18 miles west of Port-au-Prince. Eighty percent of the buildings were totally destroyed, and virtually all of the ones left standing suffered at least some damage. Léogâne is where we were to spend most of our time in Haiti. Though only a short distance, the trip from Port-au-Prince takes from 1 1/2 to 3 hours, depending on traffic and road conditions.
The drive to Léogâne made clear that four months after the earthquake there’s still a post-apocalyptic feel to vast swaths of the country. There has been almost no serious reconstruction. Most buildings lie as they did minutes after the tremors subsided, with cement roofs, like soggy rugs, thickly draped over the underlying rubble. Many cinder block walls came down. They have been “repaired” simply by stacking salvaged blocks atop the remains of the wall. The slightest aftershock will shrug them off.
Where clearing has been done, the debris isn’t taken away but simply transferred to a big pile on the sidewalk, often with a gravelly gray-white tongue lapping out into the street. In fact, in some places huge rubble piles take up an entire lane, forcing vehicles going in opposite directions to take turns. The congested streets are also where most commerce now goes on. People have set up rickety wood tables, or simply tarps on the road, to display a few mangos or bottles of rum or dishwashing liquid for sale. Sometimes they've created an island by placing a ring of concrete chunks around them so that cars and trucks have to swerve rather than run over their merchandise (which they certainly would do).People, looking dazed and weary, stand atop the ruins that were once their houses, They listlessly dig through the destruction, looking to salvage a few intact building materials or find something of value under the broken cement. Meanwhile, a man with a missing leg, supported by dusty crutches, stands in the very middle of a busy street with his hand out; cars swing wildly around him, but no one stops to give him money. Teenagers walk by the side of the road carrying pitiful tangles of salvaged rebar.
Tent cities are everywhere. Some are orderly rows of sturdy camping tents. More are rickety frames of wood swathed with plastic tarps—the predominant colors are gray, printed with “USAID," or bright blue, saying “Samaritan’s Purse.” Most pitiful are fragile structures of tree branches covered with plastic sheeting and frayed cloth. Sometimes the tents completely fill the tiny raised median that divides the larger roads (see photo). If a child rolled under the edge of the tent in her sleep she’d be lying in traffic.
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