Our guest speaker today was Mark Johnson. He is the Deputy Director of the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution
Abatement District and came to our class today to talk about his experiences in
Haiti after the earthquake. He explained to us that although he has been
working as a civil engineer for over 28 years, he had never seen such
disastrous site as Haiti. The earthquake that struck Tohoku Japan in March of 2011
had a catastrophic magnitude of 8.9M and only killed about 22,000 people,
however the earthquake in Haiti was 7M, yet about 320,000 Haitians were killed.
He explained to us that the reason behind this massive damage of Port Au Prince/Haiti
was due to the poor structure of the houses along the hillside.  They were mostly made out of woods, plastics,
and other materials that are very unstable against strong shaking or any
unusual movements. As a result of these poorly designed structures and
materials, many Haitians were crushed from falling ceilings and complete
destruction of the building.

Right after the earthquake, people from all over the world tried to help Haiti by sending in food and
shelters but due to the destruction of roads, bridges, and ports, the whole
country was in a chaos. They were expecting the clean-up to take about six
months but even after two years, Haiti is having difficulty reconstructing back
their country. Their government hasn’t been established yet as most of the
residents do not have their own houses; most of them live in a house made out
of a sheet of plastic cover with five plus people. Although it’s a fact that
Haiti isn’t going well with their reconstruction but according to Mark Johnson,
he specifically stated that what Haiti really needs right now is the water
system. Recreating the government and stabilizing the country are important
but, as a survival, he strongly stated that water is what they need.

He was one of the members that strongly pushed the water system to be fixed and he was successful. 90% of
the pipes in the town were destroyed and there were no ways for them to bring
the water to everyone. So as a project, Mark Johnson and his group planned and
created a water refining system that used rain water as a water source. In most
cases, rain water were considered as acid rain and weren’t used as a way to get
drinking water. However, when they checked the drinking water, it was polluted
up to 20-30CF/100mL. This is not a level that we consider drinking water, but
because the Haitians’ lives was extremely harsh that they were so used to it.  When developed country people were to drink
this water, they would get extremely sick.

When someone from a well-developed country read about their lives, it is extremely shocking and would
feel some sympathy for them, but the people there are glad to have helps from
other countries and have a home.

Opinion:
Throughout the whole speech, I couldn’t stop listening to what he was saying. As he talked
about his experience in Haiti, it reminded me of the time when I went
volunteering to Japan. For the past two years, I have been volunteering in
Japan to help with the reconstruction because as a Japanese and living in such
beautiful and free country, I felt an urge to do help my own country. It stuck
me especially when at the end he said “The people there were glad to have the
world help them”. I felt emotional and I just couldn’t forget what he said
after his speech. From listening to what he said, it had motivated me to study
Environmental Engineering even more because I decided to major in EE because I
wanted to help my people with their water, air, and other environmental problems.

I am very glad to meet and hear Mark Johnson’s speech.