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Installing Steel Shelters in Petit-Goave, Haiti
On Wednesday, September 29, CHF began installing its
first steel
shelters in Petit-Goave.
Mr. François Germain, 33, whose family of 6 is receiving
CHF's first
shelter, watched contentedly as workers assembled it on
his property,
stating, "After losing our home in a catastrophe, it was
very
important for us to have a place to stay." A few other
organizations
have already installed wooden shelters in Petit-Goave,
but Germain was
happy to be part of CHF's program, noting, "This shelter
looks to be
prettier and more solid than what other organizations
are providing." |
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Each of CHF's
shelters in Petit-Goave are made of light-gauge steel that can
resist up to a Category 1 hurricane and have a projected
lifespan of 10-20 years. Each shelter is 18 square meters (194
square
feet) and is designed to be spacious enough for a family of 6.
(The average Haitian family has 5 members.) Once assembled on
site, shelters are secured to the ground using a cement platform
and receive wooden doors and windows.
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Located 70 kilometers west of the capital
of Port-au-Prince,
Petit-Goave is well inside the area most devastated by
the January 12
earthquake, which instantly killed 5 percent of its
downtown residents
and turned more than half of its historic urban center
into heaps of
rubble. More than 400 aftershocks rocked Petit-Goave in
the weeks
after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake, and shocks continue
in the region,
the most recent being a 4.4 magnitude quake just to the
west of town
on September 20. CHF has a longstanding relationship
with
Petit-Goave, and since 2006 has staffed a sub-office in
the town to
implement the USAID-funded KATA program. Through KATA,
which just
concluded in the region, CHF's Petit-Goave team built
public
infrastructure including schools, roads, and canals, and
organized
vocational training and other livelihoods projects. |
CHF plans to install several
hundred of these steel shelters in Petit-Goave through November.
The shelters are paid for through the USAID/OFDA-funded CLEARS
program, designed to facilitate recovery from the January 12
earthquake. Through CLEARS, CHF removed 57,206 cubic meters of
rubble from schools, homes, businesses, and public buildings in
Petit-Goave from February to July. CLEARS remains one of the
largest post-quake recovery projects in Haiti, and has been
active in Petit-Goave, Grand Goave, Leogane, Gressier, Cap
Haitien, and Port-au-Prince.
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