Natural Disaster - Haiti Observer Blog

When Hurricane Florence hit Carolina on Thursday, September 13, 2018, it was downgraded to a Category One hurricane, but as per CNN Meteorologist Jennifer Gray the momentum of the storm and flooding was almost equal to a Category Four. On the morning of Friday, September 14, the hurricane made landfall as a Category One hurricane over Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, a few miles east of Wilmington and not far from the South Carolina border. The hurricane came ashore with 90-mph winds and punishing storm surge.

A rush of ocean water invaded the streets on the southern end of North Carolina's Hatteras Island on Thursday. The span of the Hurricane-force winds was out for 80 miles and the tropical-storm-force winds reach 195 miles out from the center. The storm's first casualties, which included a mother and her baby were killed when a tree fell on their brick house in Wilmington, North Carolina. The child's father was taken to a hospital. Till today, the death toll from Hurricane Florence has risen to 51-- the last victim was a man, 69, died when he fell from a roof in Pender County on Sept. 22 while cleaning debris.

Read more →  

As per news report dated December 17, 2015, the Washington-based financial institution 'Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)' which is one of the main long term economic financiers of the Latin America and the Caribbean, would provide US$42 million grant to Haiti to improve its watershed managements especially in the rural areas. With this fund Haiti will be able to increase its capacity to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change, especially in the agricultural sector and encounter the threats of losses due to floods and land erosion. It would be able to improve its water and sediment conservation in selected gullies of important watersheds particularly in some areas like Centre-Artibonite Loop and enhance the educational capacity of the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine. Haiti's main four targeted projects suffer about $28 million loss, every year. Eighty percent of Haiti's land area is mountainous, only 28% of the land is arable or suitable for cultivation. Agriculture in Haiti is very closely linked to the climate factor which is again very much vulnerable to natural disasters because of Haiti's geographical location on the Caribbean cyclonic belt. Agriculture contributes 25% of Haitian GDP, 5.9% of total export, 71% rural employment and 47% overall employment of the country. IDB considers Haiti as one of the top countries in the index of highest natural disaster risk. Practically, as per the World Risk Index calculated by the United Nations University, Haiti is positioned on the 21st rank (with 11.88% disaster threat). Vanuatu tops the list of 172 countries with 36.43% threat.

Read more →