The epicentre of the earthquake that levelled Port-au-Prince this week was at a known distance west-south-west of the city, and at a known shallow depth. Although the date of the earthquake could not be predicted, it was known to be fairly inevitable.
The amplitude of the first “temblor” and each of more than a dozen powerful aftershocks could all be measured and possibly predicted. Given all this information, it would also have been possible to predict with fair accuracy how much overall damage would be done—that most large masonry buildings would likely come down.
A knowledge of Haiti itself already provides intending rescuers with some idea of the difficulties they face in delivering food, water, medicine, and shelter. Looting, gang violence (with machetes, when guns are unavailable), and such spontaneous acts of public despair as piling corpses across a street to protest the lack of aid (thus creating a roadblock against its delivery), must all have been predictable, from past experience of delivering aid after hurricane disasters. The collapse even of surviving infrastructure, and of all government services, went without saying.
But while all this could be expected, no one can reasonably be blamed. The Red Cross and other international relief agencies, the U.S. military and all national agencies in the developed countries are primed for disaster response anywhere. They can hardly be maintained in readiness for sudden events in specific locations.
All this should go without saying, but needs to be said to understand what is involved in Haitian relief efforts. There is no shortage of supplies and equipment at the ready—the “donors’ conferences” will find little resistance to committing them—and people from all over the world will send heartfelt money. National agencies will even be a little competitive in their eagerness to prove their own preparedness and usefulness.
For such reasons as I’ve sketched above, they are already tripping over each other. According to reports, the airport at Port-au-Prince is blocked with the accumulation of planes that cannot be refuelled; the city’s hospitals collapsed; inmates of the main prison escaped. Rescuers are not to be blamed when making their best efforts.
It is in human nature to look for scapegoats, however: to find someone with a public identity to blame, since there is no satisfaction in blaming everyone. Sometimes, the accused are guilty as charged, but as often they were the very men and women with the clearest understanding of the evils, who did most to contain them. Their ill-luck is simply to become “the face associated with it.” One thinks of the great medical researchers, whose reward is to have the most hideous diseases named in their honour. The rain falls on the just and unjust, and curses fall in the same way.
Pat Robertson, the American evangelical, has brought down contumely on himself for his curious assertion that Haiti is suffering divine retribution, for some pact made with the devil, a very long time ago. Before we begin cursing him for this, let us at least observe that he appears to be raising more money for relief efforts than any of his self-appointed moral superiors. His remarks were extremely tasteless, but then, what should we think of contemporary tastes?
Nor would I dismiss the Biblical idea of divine retribution, except to note, it is Biblical. We humans are in no position to read the mind of God, and those of “catholic” or “orthodox” faith should know better than to claim this ability. The reader who wants to contemplate this mystery would better puzzle on the Bible, than on the prophecies of Pat Robertson.
I have never been to Haiti, but have met people quite familiar with the place. Each has depicted a “broken society,” getting “broker” continuously over the last generation or two; a country unable to rise to the task of governing itself without tyranny. There are many such countries in our world; and in every case there are plausible historical explanations for how they got that way. Mr. Robertson’s own off-the-cuff comparison of Haiti to the Dominican Republic—a far more successful country that shares the same island—did not lack acuity.
But the same informants who described to me the worst of Haiti, often also described the best: exhilarating encounters with warm, kindly, often very creative and thoughtful people, who were no less “typically Haitian” than members of machete gangs. An earthquake makes no distinctions between them.
The moral theatre is not in the earthquake, but in the response to it. We pray inwardly for the relief of suffering, out of empathy, as we should. But then we should pray the poor people of this smashed city and nation will themselves rise from the ruins, and make the best that can be made of their terrible suffering.
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