Hurricane Noel leaves poorest in dire straits
Friday, 16 November 2007
Elizabeth Eames Roebling from Sata Domingo
The bus carrying relief volunteers from the Colectiva de Mujeres y Salud stopped at the flooded Bao River, about three hours' drive from the capital, unable to cross.
Its 40 occupants, mostly women, unloaded the mattresses, fresh water, vaccines, medical supplies and mosquito nets from the trailer behind, and piled supplies and themselves into the back of a heavy truck, crossing water that covered the tires, then bouncing along the mud and stone track.
More than 155 communities are still cut off from the rest of Dominican Republic due to the destruction of bridges and roads by Hurricane Noel, which was still just a tropical depression with winds of 35 mph when it made landfall here on Oct. 29.
To date, 85 people are reported to have died during the five days of downpours, 45 are still missing, and more than 80,000 were displaced.
The country shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, where at least 57 people were killed. While Noel also dropped heavy rains on the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas, those countries recorded less damage and far fewer fatalities.
For some of the relief volunteers, a large number of them university students, this was their first experience with the marginal lives of many of their compatriots, who eke out a living on unclaimed fertile ground on the high river banks. Although the houses had concrete floors, the walls were made of thin strips of wood with mud plaster packed between.
"I was raised in the capital," said Dayanna Hirnedez, a lawyer with the Collectiva. "I had never seen the poverty in the countryside until I went out once as a volunteer with the Collectiva. We live in a bubble in the capital."
The Collectiva de Mujers cancelled all its ongoing projects to travel to some of the country's more remote areas. Thanks to the transport workers' union, which donated buses, 40 aid workers managed to reach a stranded village outside the eastern city of Monte Plata.
Teams of doctors, psychologists, and other volunteers spent one day with a group of 80 people who were living in waist-deep water. Two days later, the Collectiva was out again to this settlement near the prosperous city of San Juan de Maguana.
Organised and divided into teams, the Collectiva commandeered the settlement of 150 people, creating an areas for vaccinations, for private doctor's consultations, for meetings with the psychologists, for entertaining the children and yet another for the distribution of the material aid.
Raphael Polanco Peralta, press officer in the government's Department of Water Resources, described the damage.
"It rained continuously for more than seven days," he told IPS. "Rivers flooded with no warning. Two of our dams were overwhelmed."
Many residents lost not only their homes and possessions but their livelihoods as well.
According to World Bank statistics, 42 percent of the population is poor and 16 percent live below the extreme poverty level of one dollar a day.
"The greatest tragedy is the loss of life. From that we will never recover," Peralta said. "If we have the resources, which are not in our current national budget, we can perhaps repair the damage to the dams and reservoirs within a few months. But who knows how long it will take for the agriculture to recover?"
"We were fortunate in two things: the tourist developments on the north and east coasts were not affected and the major rice harvest was already finished. But the crops which were most affected, the rice, the plantains, these are our staples. These are what the people eat every day."
The two overflowing dams resulted in the most damage to agriculture, in the northeast provinces of Duarte, Maria Trinidad Sanchez and the southern provinces of Azua and Barahona.
"It is a low-lying area, with lots of water in it already as rice needs a lot of water to grow. But now there is nowhere for the additional water to go. There is nothing but sunshine that will dry this area out," said Peralta.
Traveling west from the capital of Santo Domingo, through Bani and Azua, the major rivers have subsided, leaving large stone river beds. The floodwaters cut through the high embankments like a cleaver, exposing as much as seven metres of fresh soil. A week after the storm, water was still gushing off of one plantain field into the ditch at the side of the road. Other fields, covered in mud, showed ordered humps that betrayed a neatly prepared and planted field underneath.
The outpouring of aid both from within the nation, from the Dominican diaspora and the international community has been swift and profound. Yet it may take weeks and months for the aid to arrive and normal life to resume. Many schools are still being used as shelters. National examinations have been postponed.
Rains are predicted again for the rest of the week. A heavy rainstorm came again that afternoon beside the Bao River, forcing the volunteers to crowd into the small houses.
The owner of one house, which had served as the pharmacy, stood proud and unflinching next to wife and four children. With simple resignation, tinged with neither anger nor resentment, he said: "We have lost everything now. The water took away our land which we built. Now there is nothing. We will have to chop wood to sell for charcoal."
By dusk, the rock and dirt road had turned to mud. The large truck did not appear so the women walked back the three kilometres to the banks of the river. They ended their 16-hour day by crossing the Bao on foot, in swirling water rising to their thighs.
......
IPS
The bus carrying relief volunteers from the Colectiva de Mujeres y Salud stopped at the flooded Bao River, about three hours' drive from the capital, unable to cross.
Its 40 occupants, mostly women, unloaded the mattresses, fresh water, vaccines, medical supplies and mosquito nets from the trailer behind, and piled supplies and themselves into the back of a heavy truck, crossing water that covered the tires, then bouncing along the mud and stone track.
More than 155 communities are still cut off from the rest of Dominican Republic due to the destruction of bridges and roads by Hurricane Noel, which was still just a tropical depression with winds of 35 mph when it made landfall here on Oct. 29.
To date, 85 people are reported to have died during the five days of downpours, 45 are still missing, and more than 80,000 were displaced.
The country shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, where at least 57 people were killed. While Noel also dropped heavy rains on the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas, those countries recorded less damage and far fewer fatalities.
For some of the relief volunteers, a large number of them university students, this was their first experience with the marginal lives of many of their compatriots, who eke out a living on unclaimed fertile ground on the high river banks. Although the houses had concrete floors, the walls were made of thin strips of wood with mud plaster packed between.
"I was raised in the capital," said Dayanna Hirnedez, a lawyer with the Collectiva. "I had never seen the poverty in the countryside until I went out once as a volunteer with the Collectiva. We live in a bubble in the capital."
The Collectiva de Mujers cancelled all its ongoing projects to travel to some of the country's more remote areas. Thanks to the transport workers' union, which donated buses, 40 aid workers managed to reach a stranded village outside the eastern city of Monte Plata.
Teams of doctors, psychologists, and other volunteers spent one day with a group of 80 people who were living in waist-deep water. Two days later, the Collectiva was out again to this settlement near the prosperous city of San Juan de Maguana.
Organised and divided into teams, the Collectiva commandeered the settlement of 150 people, creating an areas for vaccinations, for private doctor's consultations, for meetings with the psychologists, for entertaining the children and yet another for the distribution of the material aid.
Raphael Polanco Peralta, press officer in the government's Department of Water Resources, described the damage.
"It rained continuously for more than seven days," he told IPS. "Rivers flooded with no warning. Two of our dams were overwhelmed."
Many residents lost not only their homes and possessions but their livelihoods as well.
According to World Bank statistics, 42 percent of the population is poor and 16 percent live below the extreme poverty level of one dollar a day.
"The greatest tragedy is the loss of life. From that we will never recover," Peralta said. "If we have the resources, which are not in our current national budget, we can perhaps repair the damage to the dams and reservoirs within a few months. But who knows how long it will take for the agriculture to recover?"
"We were fortunate in two things: the tourist developments on the north and east coasts were not affected and the major rice harvest was already finished. But the crops which were most affected, the rice, the plantains, these are our staples. These are what the people eat every day."
The two overflowing dams resulted in the most damage to agriculture, in the northeast provinces of Duarte, Maria Trinidad Sanchez and the southern provinces of Azua and Barahona.
"It is a low-lying area, with lots of water in it already as rice needs a lot of water to grow. But now there is nowhere for the additional water to go. There is nothing but sunshine that will dry this area out," said Peralta.
Traveling west from the capital of Santo Domingo, through Bani and Azua, the major rivers have subsided, leaving large stone river beds. The floodwaters cut through the high embankments like a cleaver, exposing as much as seven metres of fresh soil. A week after the storm, water was still gushing off of one plantain field into the ditch at the side of the road. Other fields, covered in mud, showed ordered humps that betrayed a neatly prepared and planted field underneath.
The outpouring of aid both from within the nation, from the Dominican diaspora and the international community has been swift and profound. Yet it may take weeks and months for the aid to arrive and normal life to resume. Many schools are still being used as shelters. National examinations have been postponed.
Rains are predicted again for the rest of the week. A heavy rainstorm came again that afternoon beside the Bao River, forcing the volunteers to crowd into the small houses.
The owner of one house, which had served as the pharmacy, stood proud and unflinching next to wife and four children. With simple resignation, tinged with neither anger nor resentment, he said: "We have lost everything now. The water took away our land which we built. Now there is nothing. We will have to chop wood to sell for charcoal."
By dusk, the rock and dirt road had turned to mud. The large truck did not appear so the women walked back the three kilometres to the banks of the river. They ended their 16-hour day by crossing the Bao on foot, in swirling water rising to their thighs.
......
IPS