Aid Workers On The Front Line In Haiti Find Washed-Out Roads, And Some Signs Of Hope

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A soldier walks over earthquake rubble on Tuesday, the morning after Tropical Storm Grace swept over Les Cayes, Haiti, three days after the 7.2 magnitude quake.

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A girl plays inside a classroom on Wednesday where her family is staying at a school turned into a shelter for those displaced by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Les Cayes, Haiti.

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A man carries two of about 20 boxes of food aid from the city government to cook on site for residents displaced by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake staying in improvised tents next to a school in Les Cayes, Haiti, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021.

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A man carries two of about 20 boxes of food aid from the city government to cook on site for residents displaced by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake staying in improvised tents next to a school in Les Cayes, Haiti, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021.

Fernando Llano/AP

But there are signs, she added, that Haitians are rallying around one another to help cope with the disaster. Donations have come in from Port-Au-Prince, where people were affected less severely. Families have reached out to help relatives. Communities have offered support, even if that means people helping others to dig debris out of their homes, or to look for survivors under the rubble.

«There’s a very strong and vital sense of neighbors helping each other, and community members helping each other, Delafield said. «That’s activity that I see as very, very vibrant.

Haiti was already struggling, due to intense storms and deforestation

Climate change has brought an intense cycle of challenging weather to the Caribbean, where dry seasons and droughts are often followed by powerful hurricanes and other storms — conditions that have been worsening deforestation and causing erosion.

«As a result, communities that rely on rain-fed agriculture are not getting enough to eat, Delafield said. So, even before the latest disaster, she added, relief workers were seeing «high levels of hunger, high levels of poverty.

Haiti was also enduring political upheaval, and the difficulties brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then came the earthquake, and the latest tropical system.

When Delafield spoke to NPR by phone Wednesday, an aftershock had just forced her and others to run out of a building.

«There’s no way to predict it, she said of the aftershocks. «It’s just like a thing that causes a lot of anxiety among people because it is so unpredictable and sporadic. It just feels like a kind of cruel mental health element of this type of disaster.