Mackinson Elson sits in shock near the site of a house that collapsed leaving one young man dead and another with broken legs in Jacmel, Haiti. Mr. Elson, who was one of about 10 people assigned to do hand demolition on the house, helped carry the young man's body to a waiting ambulance.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
Demolition work across the city has been halted indefinitely after one young man was killed and another injured when a house partially collapsed on the pair during a group clearing effort.
The incident, which traumatized the dozen or so uninjured volunteers working on the site, highlights the precarious nature of site-clearing work in post-earthquake Jacmel. With half-demolished buildings littering the city, the laborious job of clearing the lots they sit on has become both a vital precursor to rebuilding and a sought-after form of income for the unemployed.
For weeks, non-government organizations across the city have been paying teams of locals about 200 Gourdes per day (about $10) to take to the streets - and half-demolished building plots - with hard hats and shovels. Under the umbrella of a United Nation's cash-for-work program, most workers who are lucky enough to win a placement (and a monogrammed t-shirt) can be employed for up to two weeks regardless of whether they have a background in construction.
Watch raw footage of the aftermath of the collapse. Warning: graphic.
Until Tuesday's incident, the program had been widely applauded. Not only has it put money into the pockets of needy families, many of whom were displaced by the earthquake, it has helped to expedite the rubble-clearing effort, which the municipality of Jacmel does not have the capacity to do on its own. That, in turn, has helped increase the progress of shelter organizations on the ground, many of which have mandates to built medium-term housing solutions but no budget for removing rubble from the plots they aim to build on.
But the pitfalls of outfitting armies of untrained volunteers with rudimentary construction tools - and unleashing them on semi-destroyed buildings without proper oversight - became instantly obvious around 1 p.m. Tuesday, when the dust-covered and near-lifeless body of 24-year-old Jean Jules was being carried out of a collapsed, three-storey former medical laboratory. A portion of it that survived the earthquake caved under the weight of about one dozen volunteers for the German NGO Welthungerhilfe working to strip rebar out of the structure on Rue Isaac Pardo.
Mr. Jules, who was well known in town as a hard worker, was hit in the head with a piece of concrete. He succumbed to his injuries en route to hospital. A second man, 28-year-old Maybob Antoine, suffered a broken leg.
Watch a similar building demolition project in Jacmel:
Later that afternoon, a team of local government officials visited the site, which was cordoned off with yellow police tape, to survey the situation in hopes it would help them decide what to do about the future of cash-for-work programs.
Ronald Andris, the city's deputy mayor, said all NGOs involved in demolition clearing are scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to discuss the addition of safety precautions to the program, which is poised to undergo a vast expansion in the coming weeks with the addition of 10,000 cash-for-work placements region-wide in an effort to kick-start the economy and wean unemployed families off food handouts.
"The main concern is that all sites need to be supervised with an engineer," Mr. Andris said.
That will undoubtedly be a tall order for most NGOs to fulfill. Professional experts, such as engineers and architects are, like doctors, in heavy demand and short supply.
Welthungerhilfe alone employs 600 workers, said Jean Vea Dieudonne, who manages the NGO's operations in Jacmel. Staffing sites with engineers would only solve part of the problem, he said, adding that many workers are eager to get their hands dirty even though they show up wearing flip-flops or Crocs, the ever-present rubberized shoes, and show little regard for their own safety.
Barry Sampson, an official with the Salvation Army in Jacmel, said he's often had to advise his own emboldened rubble-clearing teams to abandon precarious looking structures.
"It's like everything else here - life at what price," he said.
Ebby Angel Louis is Special to The Globe and Mail