In the book The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster by Jonathan M. Katz we learn that all help is not helpful, but we can change that. In 2010 an earthquake hit Haiti, being one of the worse things to happen to this already poor country. This book provides us with a lot of information about the before and after of the Haiti earthquake. Help was provided to help rebuild, but some solutions worked and some didn’t. Instead of focusing on what will be noticed by the outside world, Haiti needed what would help them rebuild as a country. The people of the country needed health care, food, schooling, aid, and help cleaning up the country. What they got instead was money that wasn’t fully spent on the Haitians and countries that wanted to help because it would benefit themselves. The help that they are getting is not being used like it should be. Port-au-Prince overflows with waste and 52 trucks that have been imported to help clean up are still sitting in customs. A good chunk of the money is spent on jet fuel for planes to come down and about $50,000 of it was spent on elevator maintenance in the US embassy, which didn’t have much damage. There wasn’t many elevators to begin with. Meetings are held to talk about what can be done to help and most of the time is spent arguing. The meetings are held in places that are closed off to the haitians even though they are the ones needing guidance. The people are not taking the time to connect with the Haitians and that causes more problem. The purpose of the first wave of help was to save lives. Mexico, Luxemburg, and Iceland sent rescue teams that were helpful. “Doctors and nurses flooded in to perform thousands of surgeries and amputations: A team of about 350 medics from neighboring Cuba already on loan to Haiti were quickly joined by hundreds more” (Katz 68). Israeli army medics set up a field hospital, which became the go to place for trauma cases. At this point anything could help and what made most of this happen was all of the money that was sent. “Private donors spurred on by images that ran on a continuous loop on cable news, gave at least 3 billion” (Katz 68). By the end of the year, private U.S donations reached $1.4 billion and an artist from Colorado donated $180 from his sales to NGO partners in health. As good as all of this sounds not all of Haiti was getting the help it needed, specifically Carrefour. Five days after all has happened a U.S team was making it’s way but by then it was too late. They felt they were crazy to even think that they would get
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It is said that it was brought by U.N. peacekeepers. This has infected at least 620,000 people and has killed about 7,700. Maybe this was the start of something the U.N. could do to help Haiti because of all the people it affected? Wrong, they are avoiding being accountable for the outbreak. There is just more talk about sanitation and water projects, that were already in place before the outbreak happened. The solution of bringing in more people to help didn’t work too well and brought more
It is said that it was brought by U.N. peacekeepers. This has infected at least 620,000 people and has killed about 7,700. Maybe this was the start of something the U.N. could do to help Haiti because of all the people it affected? Wrong, they are avoiding being accountable for the outbreak. There is just more talk about sanitation and water projects, that were already in place before the outbreak happened. The solution of bringing in more people to help didn’t work too well and brought more