After the Quake

On Tuesday, 12 January 2010, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck Haiti. The epicentre of the quake was approximately 25 km from Port-au-Prince.

With approximately 3 million people affected, the earthquake was the most catastrophic natural disaster ever experienced in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Roughly 250,000 lives were lost and 300,000 people were injured. About 1.5 million individuals were internally displaced and forced to live in makeshift camps.

In June 2010, I collaborated with Panos Caribbean to document the reconstruction efforts in Port-au-Prince. Six months after the quake, the capital city lay in a broken state with collapsed buildings and piles of rubble and twisted rebar. Much of the clean-up and rebuilding was being undertaken by hand with shovels, pickaxes, and sledgehammers. Yet in the midst of this devastation, a defiant spirit of life was evident on the streets and in the encampments.