Returning People to Safe Homes

Haitian engineer Yves Bellevue closely monitors a group of masons who are repairing a damaged home in the Delmas 32 neighborhood. They were recently trained to use techniques that meet international standards when repairing earthquake-damaged homes and Bellevue is very pleased with their work.

Bellevue is one of 400 specially trained engineers who inspected more than 389,000 homes in the capital—the largest assessment ever conducted for a disaster of this size—as part of a USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and World Bank funded program that is managed by PADF in cooperation with Haiti’s Ministry of Public Works.

Throughout the capital, inspectors found that 54 percent of buildings are safe, 26 percent need repairs to be safe, and 20 percent are unsafe and need to be demolished. Repairing the earthquake-damaged homes is the fastest, least-expensive method to move hundreds of thousands of people out of the displacement camps.

Plus, the repairs are 300 percent stronger than before and make the houses safer from future quakes and hurricanes.

Repairing homes allows people to move out of the camps more quickly and is an important first step when rebuilding the communities.

The 34-year-old Bellevue also knows that the massive project is building capacity of masons, construction workers, and fellow “As a managing engineer, this has been a great opportunity for me,” he says. “I’m able to learn and teach new techniques. It’s so important for Haiti. Without this, we would not be able to rebuild the country.”

These techniques, along with the repaired homes, are helping to build a stronger Haiti.