Dear Editor,

Our hearts go out to the people of Haiti in their hour of need and we are all

duty-bound to help the country recover. Even as we offer our assistance we cannot help but reflect on what could have been were Haiti a different kind of place – a different system, different standards, different economy, different society. Would the damage have been so severe? Would there be this great loss of life?

The susceptibility of Haiti to catastrophic effects from natural disasters was

well-known prior to this event and due in no small part to serious environmental degradation (especially deforestation) coupled with extreme poverty and failure to build to appropriate standards. It has been reported that a recent OAS study concluded that “many of the buildings in Haiti were so shoddily constructed that they were unlikely to survive any disaster, let alone an earthquake like the one that devastated Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. ” (CNN 13/1/10).

As the global community rallies to help, Haitians grapple with this extreme challenge. It is incumbent on us to encourage the use of appropriate standards in the rebuilding, bearing in mind that Haiti, like Jamaica, is located on a fault line and also faces annual threats from hurricanes. We must review not only our own standards but the level of compliance with them. Our building stock, especially the more modern structures, are assumed to incorporate good engineering practices and so can withstand some seismic events and category five hurricanes. Our assurance is founded on the present approval process within the parish councils and the cadre of inspectors who review building plans.

Looking around, however, there are glaring examples of poor construction, such as entire communities which have obviously been erected without compliance to building codes. These include cases of people adding on to the original structure and erection of additional structures without specific permission. There are glaring examples of the building of large communities on filled-in wetlands, close to river beds, steep hillsides and too close to gullies.

While we review the building codes we must realistically address the issue of unregulated building in order to take a proactive approach towards disaster mitigation. If we learn nothing else from the Haitian plight, let us at least acknowledge that prevention is better and many times less expensive than the cure. We can indeed rebuild but a life lost cannot be restored.

Paul M Carroll

Senior Environmental Consultant

TEM Network Ltd

20 West Kings House Road

Kingston 10

paulmcarroll@gmail.com