Hi All,
I spent yesterday (Sunday) getting to Port au Prince and back and spending a few work related hours there. I went with two of my surveyors to inspect damages in the main port areas and another couple of facilities on behalf of international insurers.
Getting to the border crossing from SD was easy, 2 hours to Barahona and then another hour plus on the road through Cabral, Duverge to Jimani (turn right off the Barahona road at the sign just before entering the city limits). The road to Jimani is fairly good though dotted with vast potholes and bumps which make sections of it poor and dangerous for high speed driving. The road goes to the south of Lago Enriquillo. There is another road to Jimani around the north of the lake but it's longer and the locals say the road is no good.
At the border crossing there were no checks for security, customs, passport control and we drove straight through the DR area, into the "No man's land" of the middle. This area looks, sounds and smells just like Africa. A huge open market place with stalls selling all kinds of stuff. Towards the DR exit into Haiti again no checks of any kind, just a friendly wave from the guys that open the simple iron gates to let you through.
After that there is a Haitian police/customs check point after about half a mile on a dirt/gravel road running literally at water level right on the shore of a beautiful lake between the white chalk cliffs and the very blue water. No more than a stop and wave at the police check point. The road gets better in tarmacked patches and eventually turns into a regular road with some potholes, which runs straight into Port au Prince, about an hour's drive to the city. No signs of destruction along the way until you actually get into the metropolitan area where you begin to see occasional collapsed buildings and fallen walls.
Around Citie de Soleil one of the biggest and poorest slums of Port au Prince, there was a huge traffic jam caused by trucks getting in and out of aid distribution centres, and thousands of people milling around. We passed a huge crowd getting buckets of water from a manual pump. More signs of devastation here and the most impressing sight is the vast tent cities on open places, the roadsides and central reservations. The tents are mostly made of bedsheets on wooden frames one adjoining the other. On the way towards the port you see more destruction and outside the port there is a vegetable marked where hundreds of people were just sat on the ground cleaning huge piles of rotting cabbage - the smell was horrendous.
In the port, the North (container) pier has gone, fallen into the water together with huge cranes, containers and trucks. It was in the middle of unloading a ship at the time of the quake and about 30 longshoremen are thought to have been killed. The pier between the warehouse sheds to what was the edge of the dock (about 12 metres) is gone and what remains is cracked and breaking up. Armed US troops are inside the port to prevent looting. The main container yard about 100 metres from the water looks OK. The south pier, previously used for unloading bulk cargoes has been made partially operative by the US troops,who are using army landing craft to discharge equipment and cargo to the shore. US helicopters are flying all the time across the city.
The whole downtown part of the city is gone, just a pile of rubble, dust and still a smell of cadavers.
To avoid the traffic jams going out of the city we drove through the backstreets of Citie de Soleil through the street markets, forded the river and drove along the creek until we got to the main road. An amazing experience with scenes reminiscent of India or Africa, with pigs and cattle in the water together with crowds of people bathing, doing their laundry and collecting buckets of water from the river, carrying them on poles across their shoulders.
Once back on the road it was an easy ride to the border, about 40 minutes, then the same wave through the checkpoints and out on the road to Barahona. All the way back there were convoys of aid trucks going towards the border as well as buses and trucks with the exiting international search and rescue teams on their way to SD airport and home.
It will take us some time to digest everything we saw, and we'll probably be going back to PaP before then.
Bryan
I spent yesterday (Sunday) getting to Port au Prince and back and spending a few work related hours there. I went with two of my surveyors to inspect damages in the main port areas and another couple of facilities on behalf of international insurers.
Getting to the border crossing from SD was easy, 2 hours to Barahona and then another hour plus on the road through Cabral, Duverge to Jimani (turn right off the Barahona road at the sign just before entering the city limits). The road to Jimani is fairly good though dotted with vast potholes and bumps which make sections of it poor and dangerous for high speed driving. The road goes to the south of Lago Enriquillo. There is another road to Jimani around the north of the lake but it's longer and the locals say the road is no good.
At the border crossing there were no checks for security, customs, passport control and we drove straight through the DR area, into the "No man's land" of the middle. This area looks, sounds and smells just like Africa. A huge open market place with stalls selling all kinds of stuff. Towards the DR exit into Haiti again no checks of any kind, just a friendly wave from the guys that open the simple iron gates to let you through.
After that there is a Haitian police/customs check point after about half a mile on a dirt/gravel road running literally at water level right on the shore of a beautiful lake between the white chalk cliffs and the very blue water. No more than a stop and wave at the police check point. The road gets better in tarmacked patches and eventually turns into a regular road with some potholes, which runs straight into Port au Prince, about an hour's drive to the city. No signs of destruction along the way until you actually get into the metropolitan area where you begin to see occasional collapsed buildings and fallen walls.
Around Citie de Soleil one of the biggest and poorest slums of Port au Prince, there was a huge traffic jam caused by trucks getting in and out of aid distribution centres, and thousands of people milling around. We passed a huge crowd getting buckets of water from a manual pump. More signs of devastation here and the most impressing sight is the vast tent cities on open places, the roadsides and central reservations. The tents are mostly made of bedsheets on wooden frames one adjoining the other. On the way towards the port you see more destruction and outside the port there is a vegetable marked where hundreds of people were just sat on the ground cleaning huge piles of rotting cabbage - the smell was horrendous.
In the port, the North (container) pier has gone, fallen into the water together with huge cranes, containers and trucks. It was in the middle of unloading a ship at the time of the quake and about 30 longshoremen are thought to have been killed. The pier between the warehouse sheds to what was the edge of the dock (about 12 metres) is gone and what remains is cracked and breaking up. Armed US troops are inside the port to prevent looting. The main container yard about 100 metres from the water looks OK. The south pier, previously used for unloading bulk cargoes has been made partially operative by the US troops,who are using army landing craft to discharge equipment and cargo to the shore. US helicopters are flying all the time across the city.
The whole downtown part of the city is gone, just a pile of rubble, dust and still a smell of cadavers.
To avoid the traffic jams going out of the city we drove through the backstreets of Citie de Soleil through the street markets, forded the river and drove along the creek until we got to the main road. An amazing experience with scenes reminiscent of India or Africa, with pigs and cattle in the water together with crowds of people bathing, doing their laundry and collecting buckets of water from the river, carrying them on poles across their shoulders.
Once back on the road it was an easy ride to the border, about 40 minutes, then the same wave through the checkpoints and out on the road to Barahona. All the way back there were convoys of aid trucks going towards the border as well as buses and trucks with the exiting international search and rescue teams on their way to SD airport and home.
It will take us some time to digest everything we saw, and we'll probably be going back to PaP before then.
Bryan
Last edited:
