Resilient Buildings and Self-Reliance Will Strengthen Haiti Now and into the Future

Jeremy Sigmon, LEED® AP BD+C
Manager, Building Codes Advocacy
U.S. Green Building Council

Rubble and tent villages in every direction. Mountains of trash with no place to go. A stench that makes your stomach turn.

Canals full of stagnant, disease-filled water. Thirsty livestock and nesting mosquitoes competing for the same dirty water.

A denuded landscape with hardly any nutrient-rich soil left to retain the precious water needed to support replanting.

Millions of people with limited or no access to basic amenities like clean water, safe shelters, electricity and toilet facilities.

My heart sinks.

Solidarité Market surrounded in trash sometimes taller than trucks on Boulevard La Saline in
Port au Prince. (March 11, 2012)

Tent villages extend to the foothills that, without vegetation, come sliding down when it rains. (Photo taken by my colleague outside of Port au Prince in February, 2012)

Yet I see so many of Haiti’s own smiling amidst these tough times and even tougher conditions. Haiti, with its rich culture and instinct of hope and resolve, is building for a better future, trying to put behind them a government that has failed them time and time again.

This was both my first and last impression of Haiti as I traveled on an old American school bus out of and back into Port au Prince. My many other thoughts and impressions during my seven-day stay were far more hopeful.