For the second lecture of our class, we had our water and wastewater systems professor, Mark Johnson, as our guest speaker. Instead of talking about his company that he works for and what it takes to be an environmental engineer, he focused his talk on how his special skills allowed him to help those individuals in dire need from the destruction of the earthquake in Haiti. Before Professor Johnson discussed about his experience in Haiti, he told the class that the first time he ever left his state/country was in college, when he went to Haiti and the Dominica Republic to study erosion and conduct test for their mining industry. He was only 20 years old and it was even his first time on a plane, so it was a unique experience for him. Ironically, years after graduating from college, he went back to Haiti in January of 2010, to help all of the victims who were struggling to find clean potable water.
Professor Johnson told the class that about 225,000 people died in the earthquake and left 1.4 million people homeless. The number of people that died was an estimate, as they calculated how many truckloads of dead bodies came to the mass burial sites outside of the city. The last earthquake to hit Haiti was 250 years ago. The epicenter was 10 miles away from the city and the magnitude of the earthquake was a 7.0. There have been several earthquakes in recent years that have had a higher magnitude than the Haiti earthquake, but the total death toll was a lot less. The reason for this phenomenon was because most of the recent structures were built poorly and they were built on top of each other, which created mass destruction and a high death toll. When Mark Johnson arrived in Haiti, there was no electricity, no water, and no sanitation. There were tents and shacks all over the place. One example of the massive refugee camps throughout the city were the 40,000 people who moved to the 9 hole golf club. At this time, the USAID OFDA, said that it will take 6 months to clean this all up. Well they were clearly wrong because to this day, Haiti is still struggling to recover from the natural disaster that occurred almost three years ago.
Mark Johnson had to quickly hire local engineers and college students to help with the process of building small sheds and having a water system that collected rainwater from the roofs of the shed. One of the local engineers is name Mark Eddie, and he was a bilingual engineer, which allowed Mr. Johnson to communicate with him. The rainwater was not supposed to be used as drinking water because it lacked the minerals, but its sole purpose was for hygiene and cooking. The civilians received their drinking water from “bladders” which were strategically placed 100-200 meters away from everyone else. This allowed every person to have access to water, and it was a 24 hour process of refilling the bladders with trucks that had tanks, so they could bring in fresh water from sources outside of the city. The interesting story about these bladders was that the water inside of them was so clean that it would pass the regulations that are placed in the United States. Although, when they tested the water that was in the buckets that the citizens used to transfer the water from the bladder to their shelters, they were considered to be highly contaminated. The theory is that the water got contaminated by their practices of lifestyle, but that their body could actually handle the higher concentration of contaminants. They could tolerate20-30 chloroform per 100 ml. This phenomenon could explain why there was no one who got sick from the water they were using.
He closed his lecture by talking about the shelters that were being made from a cargo ship of supplies that were donated from Lowes. They were designed for five people and each one of them had a rainwater collector. The record for how many family members that lived in one of these shelters were 15 people! It is amazing to see how the people of Haiti found a way to persevere and I envy their courage and willingness to survive. It is also amazing how we have Iphones and television, and yet there are people who live relatively close to the United States who do not have access to clean drinking water.