Haiti starts moving quake victims to safer refuge

Haiti's government and foreign aid agencies started an operation on Saturday to move thousands of earthquake survivors to a safer refuge to avoid the risk of mudslides and flooding during the rainy season.  

More than a million people were left homeless by the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake that wrecked swaths of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, and experts say thousands of those are at risk from seasonal rains due in the coming weeks.

Haitian president Rene Preval said special settlements were being set up by the government with the help of the United Nations and nongovernmental relief organizations to house quake survivors now living in crowded, vulnerable makeshift tent camps, some located in dangerous watersheds.

"Wherever there are people exposed to danger, we'll relocate them and give them priority," Preval told Reuters as he visited the Petionville golf club camp where nearly 50,000 survivors are sheltering, many of them on steep slopes.                                          

"We start with this camp today," Preval said.

Over the next 10 or 12 days, up to 7,500 quake survivors judged to be at risk among those in the Petionville golf club camp will be given the option to relocate, either with host families or at a new settlement set up at Corail, about 12 miles (20 km) north of Port-au-Prince.

"The (Petionville) camp is overcrowded and there are between 5,000 and 7,500 people that have been identified in these high-risk zones," said LeAnn Hager, a coordinator for the Catholic Relief Services, which help run the Petionville site along with a charity set up by Hollywood actor Sean Penn.

"They would be placed in grave danger once the rains begin. They would be exposed to flooding and other land movements," Hager said. The relocation would also help decongest the camp.                                                                                   

Threat of another disaster                                   

At least six other high-risk areas sheltering survivors have been identified as requiring evacuation before the rains.         

Some aid organizations have criticized the government and the United Nations for being slow to set up alternative safer sites.

Haiti's government says more than 300,000 people may have been killed in the Jan. 12 quake, described by some experts as the deadliest natural disaster in modern history. It hit a nation that was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.                                           

Aid workers say that unless safer, more secure shelter is found for the hundreds of thousands of homeless quake victims, the imminent rains, and the hurricane season starting on June 1, could cause another humanitarian catastrophe. 

Survivors who chose to move to the new settlement at Corail, where aid agencies have set up shelters, water points and sanitation, were being given a special pass for the trip in a convoy of buses and trucks.

Several said they were going because they had no other choice. But they were concerned about leaving their community.       

"I've lost everything. They asked me if I wanted to go, I said yes. But I have no idea about the conditions there," said Manise Raphael. "I don''t know anybody there, anyway, I don''t have a choice," she said.

Penn said he was optimistic that Haiti could rebuild successfully after the devastating quake.

At a donors' conference in New York on March 31, governments, multilateral institutions and NGOs from around the world pledged nearly $10 billion for Haiti's reconstruction.

"As an optimist, I believe that if Haiti can turn the corner, not only on the earthquake but also on this long struggle in history it's had, Haiti can become the example of how developing countries can develop themselves," Penn said.