Inevitable Earthquake Coming Soon to America's Northwest Projected To Kill 23,000 - Affect 7 Million

Photo by Martin Luff.

By Kathryn Schulz
When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.

Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-three people and caused six billion dollars’ worth of damage, lasted about fifteen seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. A thirty-second earthquake generally has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. A minute-long quake is in the high sevens, a two-minute quake has entered the eights, and a three-minute quake is in the high eights. By four minutes, an earthquake has hit magnitude 9.0.

[...]

Most people in the United States know just one fault line by name: the San Andreas, which runs nearly the length of California and is perpetually rumored to be on the verge of unleashing “the big one.” That rumor is misleading, no matter what the San Andreas ever does. Every fault line has an upper limit to its potency, determined by its length and width, and by how far it can slip. For the San Andreas, one of the most extensively studied and best understood fault lines in the world, that upper limit is roughly an 8.2—a powerful earthquake, but, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, only six per cent as strong as the 2011 event in Japan.

Just north of the San Andreas, however, lies another fault line. Known as the Cascadia subduction zone, it runs for seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, beginning near Cape Mendocino, California, continuing along Oregon and Washington, and terminating around Vancouver Island, Canada. The “Cascadia” part of its name comes from the Cascade Range, a chain of volcanic mountains that follow the same course a hundred or so miles inland. The “subduction zone” part refers to a region of the planet where one tectonic plate is sliding underneath (subducting) another. Tectonic plates are those slabs of mantle and crust that, in their epochs-long drift, rearrange the earth’s continents and oceans. Most of the time, their movement is slow, harmless, and all but undetectable. Occasionally, at the borders where they meet, it is not.

[...]

In the Pacific Northwest, everything west of Interstate 5 covers some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America. Roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million. “This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” Murphy says.

In fact, the science is robust, and one of the chief scientists behind it is Chris Goldfinger. Thanks to work done by him and his colleagues, we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten. Even those numbers do not fully reflect the danger—or, more to the point, how unprepared the Pacific Northwest is to face it. The truly worrisome figures in this story are these: Thirty years ago, no one knew that the Cascadia subduction zone had ever produced a major earthquake. Forty-five years ago, no one even knew it existed.

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The Red Cross Gets A Deadline To Disclose What Happened to the Half Billion Dollars Raised 'For Haiti'

Sen. Charles Grassley

By Justin Elliott, ProPublica

This story has been corrected.

Sen. Charles Grassley is demanding the American Red Cross explain how it spent nearly half a billion dollars raised after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

In a letter yesterday to Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern, the Iowa Republican gave the venerated charity until July 22 to answer 17 detailed questions, many of which it has never addressed publicly.

Grassley's letter was prompted by a ProPublica and NPR report last month on how the charity broke multiple promises in its effort to help the impoverished country, including by building just six permanent homes.

"A few months ago I met with you and your team to discuss performance, improvements and whistleblower issues," Grassley wrote. "I was assured that the Red Cross had made substantial steps forward in improving efficiencies and reducing waste, fraud and abuse within the organization. However, the recent news articles cast doubt on some representations made by the Red Cross."

Red Cross spokesperson Suzy DeFrancis said in a statement the charity "is proud of our work to help the people of Haiti and we welcome the opportunity to respond to Senator Grassley's questions and set the record straight."

Some of the information Grassley is asking for:

• A breakdown of all the projects the American Red Cross funded in Haiti, how much was spent on each project, and how many people were helped. As we noted in our story, the Red Cross has so far declined to give a detailed breakdown of its spending in Haiti.
• The criteria used to determine that a person in Haiti was successfully helped. The Red Cross has previously said it helped nearly half the population of the country, but Haitian officials doubt that figure.
• Just how much of the money donated for Haiti went to overhead and management. Our reporting found it was more than the 9 percent that the Red Cross has claimed.
• An explanation of what McGovern meant when she floated a "wonderful helicopter idea" in an email grasping for ways to spend remaining Haiti funds. We asked the Red Cross about the email and they didn't explain the reference.
• An explanation of the Red Cross' response to a 2011 memo by the then-director of the Haiti program, who warned of "serious program delays cause by internal issues that go unaddressed."
• A breakdown of how many employees and whistleblowers contacted the Red Cross' internal ombudsman about its Haiti program, what types of issues were raised and whether those disclosures have resulted in positive change.

Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is well known for his scrutiny of the nonprofit sector and particularly the Red Cross. His oversight of the group began more than a decade ago, after a controversy involving the use of money donated for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

In 2007, Grassley pushed through a law overhauling the Red Cross' governance structure and creating the ombudsman's office following another scandal after Hurricane Katrina.

Grassley asked the Red Cross earlier this year to explain misleading statements by McGovern about the portion of donations it spends on overhead after previous reporting by ProPublica and NPR.

While the Red Cross is not a federal agency, it was created by congressional charter more than a century ago and has a formal role to work with the government after disasters.

Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is finishing up work on a report that will cover the Red Cross' flawed response to Hurricane Sandy in New York, among other issues. That report is expected later this summer.

The Letter

____________
Correction, July 10, 2015: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the Red Cross' claims about its overhead spending. The group has said 91 percent of all donations went to Haiti and nine percent to overhead, not the other way around.

If you have information about the Red Cross or about other international aid projects, please email justin@propublica.org.

To anonymously send us documents online, please visit our SecureDrop site.

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica

Are Foreign Organizations Rebuilding Haiti or Just Cashing In?

An aerial view of downtown Port Au Prince on January 16, 2010 in Haiti.
(Photo: Master Sgt. Jeremy Lock/US Air Force)

By Nathalie Baptiste
The devastating earthquake that struck Haiti five years ago was followed by a flood, as billions of dollars were poured into a reconstruction effort largely led by private non-governmental organizations.

Almost immediately, Haitians, activists, and well-wishing donors the world over began to ask: “Where did the money go?”

This summer, ProPublica and NPR released a report on exactly where some of that money went. The headline — “How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes” — neatly summed up the beloved charity’s big-picture failures in the country. But perhaps the most damning parts of the report concerned the Red Cross’ over-reliance on non-Haitian employees, who were highly compensated despite often not even speaking the local Creole or French.

While many Americans were rightly shocked, most Haitians just nodded knowingly. “The Red Cross has always been like that,” my mother said to me the day the report was released. “They pay people a lot of money so they can vacation.” International organizations that go to Haiti to “help” often spend a lot of aid money on overhead that doesn’t go toward helping anyone.

For example, ProPublica and NPR unearthed internal budget documents for a Red Cross housing project in Campeche. The project manager position, which is reserved for an expatriate, received allowances for housing, food, home leave trips, four vacations a year, and relocation expenses. All of these totaled a whopping $140,000. The top local position, by contrast — a Haitian senior engineer — earned just $42,000.

The Red Cross isn’t alone in hiring expensive expatriate staff. According to the Center for Global Development, high overhead costs are par for the course for many international NGOs. A single staff member at an organization in Haiti can earn $200,000 each year in salary.

With an estimated 10,000 non-governmental organizations operating in the country, it’s no surprise that Haiti is often referred to as the republic of NGOs. Among Haitians, expatriates who work for these organizations have become known as the “NGO class.” They live comfortably in the well-to-do suburb of Petionville in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Expensive grocery stores and restaurants cater to their tastes. Down below, many Haitians struggle to survive.

Among locals, widespread unemployment cripples economic growth and further exacerbates poverty. According to the CIA World Factbook, 40.6 percent of Haitians are unemployed, although there’s wide participation in the informal economy. With the jobless epidemic in Haiti, job creation should be a priority for NGOs. Instead, they’re often part of the problem.

After the earthquake, for example, many aid organizations outsourced the rebuilding of homes — which might have presented good work opportunities for poor Haitians — to international firms. “Outsourcing the construction drove the price up,” explained Jake Johnston in the Boston Review, “since international companies had to fly in, rent hotels and cars, and spend USAID allowances for food and cost-of-living expenses.” The U.S. government also gave contractors and employees danger and hardship pay, which increased their salaries by more than 50 percent.

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Did The Red Cross Scam Donators After Haiti Earthquake?: Collected $500 Million — Built Only 6 Homes

By Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Laura Sullivan, NPR
The neighborhood of Campeche sprawls up a steep hillside in Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince. Goats rustle in trash that goes forever uncollected. Children kick a deflated volleyball in a dusty lot below a wall with a hand-painted logo of the American Red Cross.

RELATED STORY: "The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster" - Charity Prioritized PR over People After Superstorm Sandy — Report (Video)

In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.

Today, not one home has been built in Campeche. Many residents live in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. When it rains, their homes flood and residents bail out mud and water.

The Red Cross received an outpouring of donations after the quake, nearly half a billion dollars.

The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success.

The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.

After the earthquake, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern unveiled ambitious plans to “develop brand-new communities.” None has ever been built.

Aid organizations from around the world have struggled after the earthquake in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. But ProPublica and NPR’s investigation shows that many of the Red Cross’s failings in Haiti are of its own making. They are also part of a larger pattern in which the organization has botched delivery of aid after disasters such as Superstorm Sandy. Despite its difficulties, the Red Cross remains the charity of choice for ordinary Americans and corporations alike after natural disasters.

One issue that has hindered the Red Cross’ work in Haiti is an overreliance on foreigners who could not speak French or Creole, current and former employees say.

In a blistering 2011 memo, the then-director of the Haiti program, Judith St. Fort, wrote that the group was failing in Haiti and that senior managers had made “very disturbing” remarks disparaging Haitian employees. St. Fort, who is Haitian American, wrote that the comments included, “he is the only hard working one among them” and “the ones that we have hired are not strong so we probably should not pay close attention to Haitian CVs.”

The Red Cross won’t disclose details of how it has spent the hundreds of millions of dollars donated for Haiti. But our reporting shows that less money reached those in need than the Red Cross has said.

Lacking the expertise to mount its own projects, the Red Cross ended up giving much of the money to other groups to do the work. Those groups took out a piece of every dollar to cover overhead and management. Even on the projects done by others, the Red Cross had its own significant expenses – in one case, adding up to a third of the project’s budget.

In statements, the Red Cross cited the challenges all groups have faced in post-quake Haiti, including the country’s dysfunctional land title system.

“Like many humanitarian organizations responding in Haiti, the American Red Cross met complications in relation to government coordination delays, disputes over land ownership, delays at Haitian customs, challenges finding qualified staff who were in short supply and high demand, and the cholera outbreak, among other challenges,” the charity said.

The group said it responded quickly to internal concerns, including hiring an expert to train staff on cultural competency after St. Fort’s memo. While the group won’t provide a breakdown of its projects, the Red Cross said it has done more than 100. The projects include repairing 4,000 homes, giving several thousand families temporary shelters, donating $44 million for food after the earthquake, and helping fund the construction of a hospital.

“Millions of Haitians are safer, healthier, more resilient, and better prepared for future disasters thanks to generous donations to the American Red Cross,” McGovern wrote in a recent report marking the fifth anniversary of the earthquake.

In other promotional materials, the Red Cross said it has helped “more than 4.5 million” individual Haitians “get back on their feet.”

It has not provided details to back up the claim. And Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s prime minister at the time of the earthquake, doubts the figure, pointing out the country’s entire population is only about 10 million.

“No, no,” Bellerive said of the Red Cross’ claim, “it’s not possible.”

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Fracking Linked To Increase In Earthquakes — Again: New Study — Evidence Linking Fracking to Earthquakes Continues to Pile Up

This map shows the intensity of shaking in the area of a magnitude-3.9 earthquake that struck near Youngstown, Ohio, on Dec. 31, 2011. Research has linked this earthquake to the underground injection of wastewater from fracking. (Map credit:
U.S. Geological Survey)

By Anastasia Pantsios
A study by seven researchers from California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and the UK, The Environmental Costs and Benefits of Fracking, said “Unconventional oil and natural gas extraction enabled by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing [fracking] is driving an economic boom with consequences described from ‘revolutionary’ to ‘disastrous.’ The reality lies somewhere in between.”

The studies findings were many, including that fracking “generates income and, done well, can reduce air pollution and even water use compared with other fossil fuels.” But it also found it can reduce investment in renewables and when done carelessly, can release toxic chemicals into the environment. It also agreed: fracking causes earthquakes.

In a section headed “Induced Seismicity,” the study said, “The reactivation of faults from hydraulic fracturing, wastewater disposal and other processes such as CO2 sequestration occurs by increasing the pore pressure and therefore reducing the effective stress within a fault zone. The increased pressure allows elastic energy stored in rock to be released more easily, much like removing weight from a box to make it easier to slide along the floor. Injecting fracturing fluids or wastewater underground can intersect a fault zone directly or transmit a pulse in fluid pressure that reduces the effective stress on a fault.”

Although it says there are only a ‘handful” of documented cases of earthquakes caused directly by fracking itself, none with a magnitude of more than 4.0, and that the number is small compared to those induced by mining and dams, many more earthquakes were caused by wastewater injection, an offshoot of fracking. Those earthquakes are not only more numerous but of greater magnitude.

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Stronger ‘Frackquakes’ Are On The Way, Scientists Warn: An Inevitable Result of Widespread Hydrolic Fracking

A Frack-Quake Future? - King Library, San José, CA -
San José Earthquake, 2007 (Photo by San José Lib)

By Emily Atkin
The man-made earthquakes that have been shaking up the southern United States only stand to get stronger and more dangerous as the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, increases, scientists warned at a Thursday conference.

According to multiple reports, scientists attending the Seismological Society of America annual meeting agreed that fracking can change the state of stress on existing faults to the point of failure, causing earthquakes. That stress is generally not caused by fuel extraction itself, but by a process called “wastewater injection,” where companies take the leftover water used to frack wells and inject it deep into the ground.

Though it was previously believed that the man-made earthquakes could not exceed a 5.0 magnitude, many now say that larger quakes could become the norm as more and more water is stored underground.

“I think ultimately, as fluids propagate and cover a larger space, the likelihood that it could find a larger fault and generate larger seismic events goes up,” Western University earth sciences professor Gail Atkinson reportedly said at the meeting.

Because of this and other warnings, the U.S. government also announced on Thursday that it would begin to track the risks that these so-called “frackquakes” pose, and start including them on official maps that help influence building codes.

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Fracking Definitively Linked to Earthquakes for the First Time By Ohio Geologists

Illustration by Jayso Shenk.

By Julie Carr Smyth
Geologists in Ohio have for the first time linked earthquakes in a geologic formation deep under the Appalachians to hydraulic fracturing, leading the state to issue new permit conditions Friday in certain areas that are among the nation's strictest.

A state investigation of five small tremors last month in the Youngstown area, in the Appalachian foothills, found the injection of sand and water that accompanies hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the Utica Shale may have increased pressure on a small, unknown fault, said State Oil & Gas Chief Rick Simmers. He called the link "probable."

While earlier studies had linked earthquakes in the same region to deep-injection wells used for disposal of fracking wastewater, this marks the first time tremors in the region have been tied directly to fracking, Simmers said. The five seismic events in March couldn't be easily felt by people.

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U.S. May Be Inching Toward Oil Independence - Oil Industry Doesn't Mind If They Cause Earthquakes & Contaminate America To Do It

Water from faucet catches fire: caused by fracking in the area (Screen capture from
documentary "Gasland")

U.S. oil imports are down 17% since 2010, helping narrow the trade deficit.

By Paul Davidson
U.S. oil imports fell sharply again in 2013 while petroleum exports rose, leading some analysts to proclaim that a new era of energy independence is just a few years away.

RELATED STORY: Fracking Injection Wells Linked to Earthquakes Says Seismologist

RELATED STORY: Fracking Wastewater A Continuing Struggle For State and Federal Level Regulators

Experts largely credit new drilling techniques that have unearthed vast troves of previously inaccessible oil embedded in shale deposits in states such as North Dakota and Texas.

Continue Reading...

Fracking Injection Wells Linked to Earthquakes Says Seismologist

Keep fracking, and some American cities may end up like this.
(Photo from UCL Mathematical and Physical Sciences)

Full Transcript

Haiti's Earthquake: Who Actually Lives in the Houses Built After The Earthquake?

Haiti: Earthquake Aftermath (Photo by Richard Alvin)

By Haiti Grassroots Watch
Four years after the January 12 2010 earthquake, questions haunt the four main post-disaster housing projects built by the governments of René Préval and Michel Martelly. Who lives in them? Who runs them? Can the residents afford the rents or mortgages? Are the residents the earthquake victims?
By some estimates, the catastrophe killed some 200,000 people and made 1.3 million homeless overnight. But the new projects do not necessarily house earthquake victims, over 200,000 of whom still live in tents or in the three large new slums called Canaan, Onaville and Jerusalem.

Empty homes at the heart of the Lumane Casimir Village.
(Photo: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint-Val)

An investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch involving over 20 interviews and many visits discovered that, even though there are newly housed families, many – probably the majority – are not necessarily victims of the earthquake. Several others are plagued with lack of services and persistent acts of vandalism, theft and waste.

Homes Too Expensive
On July 21 2011, President Martelly, former US President Bill Clinton and then-Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive inaugurated the Housing Exposition: a fair featuring about 60 model homes in Zoranje.

One of the first projects approved by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, the Expo cost over US$ 2 million in public reconstruction money. Foreign and Haitian construction and architecture firms also spent at least US$ 2 million more. The objective was to provide models for the agencies and businesses engaged in post-earthquake housing construction.

Everyone agrees the Expo was a failure. Few visited the site and fewer still chose one of the model homes – many of which were very expensive by Haitian standards – for their project.

According to David Odnell, director of the government’s Unit for the Construction of Housing and Public Buildings (UCLBP), one of three government agencies involved with the housing question:

There were some really odd examples. Some of them had nothing to do with the way we Haitians live or think about housing. It was a completely imported thing.

Today, surrounded by weeds and goats, the fading and cracked houses are home to dozens of squatters.

A young pregnant girl who said her parents are “renters”, explained:

All the houses have new owners. They have been taken over.

A woman cooking in front of a model house on the Expo site.
(Photo: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint-Val)

The young woman who said she was “owner” of the girl’s house sat nearby with a child. Both women wanted to remain anonymous, but she was happy to share her story:

I didn’t follow any procedure got get this. I just took it. My brother was the security guard here. Nobody asked us to pay anything and nobody said anything. And in any case, who would we pay?

According to at least four residents as well as a government consultant, the squatters are all people who already lived in Zoranje. Many of the units are now being rented out.
In a November 2013 interview, Odnell, an architect, agreed:

Yes, that’s possible, and you know why. There is a void…and there is no authority there. But [the project] is not exactly a waste. I could call it poor planning, because the houses can always be recuperated.

Odnell’s counterpart at the government Fund for Social and Economic Assistance agency (FAES), Patrick Anglade, said much the same thing:

Aside from the inauguration week, the project has been forgotten. Nobody goes over there because nobody was really managing the project. The entrepreneurs left and nobody promoted the houses. It’s a problem that can be solved, but we have to figure out how to do that.

Squatters Reign
Another new project sits practically across the street from the Expo: 128 apartments built by the Venezuelan government for US$ 4.9 million (according to its figures) during the Hugo Chavez presidency. They are usually called “Kay Chavez yo” – “The Chavez Houses.”

Earthquake-resistant, sporting two bedrooms, a bath, a living room and a kitchen, and painted in bright colors, today most of the homes house people who simply broke down the doors and moved in. Only 42 of the 128 have “legal” inhabitants: families invited by the Venezuelan Embassy. Empty for 15 months, some were vandalized. Fixtures, toilets, sinks and other items, including water pumps, were stolen.

Inhabitants are already making adjustments: changing some doors, adding windows, building gates and fences.

One of “The Chavez Houses”.
(Photo: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint-Val)

Surrounded by neighborhood men, Jules Jamlee sits with on a broken chair across the street from a home that is being expanded with the addition of an extra room. Like his friends, he is insistent about his right to “his” home:

The president knows very well that we are revolutionaries. He might make threats but he knows we don’t agree with them.

The housing development still lacks water and residents complain that the lack of adequate water means that the toilets don’t work well. Many residents instead use nearby weedy areas for their physiological needs.

When Haiti Grassroots Watch visited in June 2013, journalists learned that six out of ten residents polled said they walk to get water by bucket. Four said their toilets did not function.

Poor Quality
Known as the 400% or “400 in 100” project because Martelly promised 400 homes would be built in 100 days, the nearby US$ 30 million project, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, was inaugurated on February 27 2012. The development has three kilometers of paved streets, a water system (which lacked water until just recently), an electrical system, street lamps and a square with a basketball court.

But not all of the new residents are earthquake victims. Many are public administration employees. There was a rush to fill the houses at the beginning. And there are other complications, because the houses are not gifts. Residents must pay a five-year mortgage.

The mortgages are between US$ 39 and US$ 46 per month. The contract says that “non-payment by the renter/beneficiary for three consecutive months will result in a 5% penalty for each unpaid month” and that “non-payment could lead to expulsion.”

The contract has caused a great deal of grumbling. Yves Zéphyr, an unemployed father of two who has lived in the development since November 2012, noted:

The president did not give us a house. He is selling it to us. They are too expensive. What can a person do in this country where there is no work? How can one find 1,500 gourdes (US $39) each month?

FAES admits it faces a challenge:

We are not achieving 100% payments, not even 70%. At least 30% are behind.

A small poll by Haiti Grassroots Watch gives an idea of why some people are behind. One-half of ten residents questioned said they are unemployed.

When the project was launched, the government received financing to prepare the land, build the houses, and set up the electricity system, but not for the actual services necessary for a housing development, like water, septic system cleaning, a marketplace, schools, a clinic and affordable transportation to downtown. The UCLBP's Odnell explained:

The unused toilet of one resident, who said the septic system
is not deep enough.
(Photo: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint-Val)

We have space for all the necessary services. They were all in the initial plan, but we couldn’t achieve all of them. In the end, we could only build the houses. We were only able to put in the water recently, once we looked for and got the necessary financing.

While many residents say they are happy with their new homes, there were also problems. Some roofs leaked every time it rained, and residents said that electricity was very rare. Some of the houses had been vandalized before residents moved in: tin roofs and toilets had disappeared. The septic systems for some of the houses are also causing problems.

Up to the Challenge?
The Haitian government recognizes that it faces an enormous challenge. Some 150,000 earthquake victims still live in about 300 camps and another 50,000 live in the new sprawling slums Canaan, Onaville and Jerusalem. Half of the camps have no sanitation services and only 8% are supplied with water, according to an October 2013 report from the UCLBP and the Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM)/Shelter Cluster. Residents of over 100 camps are in imminent danger of being evicted. In December, 126 families were forced to leave their homes and shacks in Canaan, near Village Lumane Casimir.

According to the government, the housing deficit will only continue to grow as people leave the countryside and smaller towns and move to cities.

According to the UCLBP’s new Policy of Housing and Urban Planning (PNLH):

Haiti needs to meet the challenge of constructing 500,000 new homes in order to meet the current and housing deficit between now and 2020.

The new policy is ambitious but vague. The language of the document implies that the government will seek to resolve the deficit in partnership with the private sector. While this kind of orientation should not necessarily be rejected out of hand, already with the Lumane Casimir Village and the 400% and Chavez Houses projects, it appears that the government is no longer going to build social housing that is within reach of the majority of Haitians.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

FRACK-QUAKES: Fracking May be Causing Earthquakes - Massachusetts Considers Preemptive Legislation After Mulitple Fracking-Associated Earthquakes in Texas

Haiti Earthquake, photo taken on Jan. 17, 2010: Could the United States face
a super-earthquake caused by Fracking? (Photo: RIBI Image Library)

The Massachusetts legislative move was taken on Friday, the day after Texas was struck by a 3.6 magnitude earthquake, one in a row of similar episodes during the last three weeks. The finger of blame is being pointed at fracking. The series of small earthquakes caused no casualties, but left local Texas residents fearing worse could be in store. 

An environmental committee at Massachusetts Statehouse has approved a bill imposing a 10-year ban on fracking for natural gas. The move comes as a wave of earthquakes in Texas has raised new concerns over the controversial drilling technique.

The Massachusetts fracking moratorium bill is designed to protect the state's drinking water from possible contamination and thus "ensure that the health and prosperity of our communities is maintained," according to one of the legislation's sponsors, Northampton Democratic state Rep. Peter Kocot, cited by AP.

To become law, the temporary ban on fracking has yet to be approved by the lawmakers and signed by the Democratic Governor, Deval Patrick.

The Massachusetts legislative move was taken on Friday, the day after Texas was struck by a 3.6 magnitude earthquake, one in a row of similar episodes during the last three weeks. The finger of blame is being pointed at fracking. The series of small earthquakes caused no casualties, but left local Texas residents fearing worse could be in store.

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