Western Union, Gap, AA, Seaboard other firms all joining Haiti effort
South Florida is playing a pivotal role to help Haiti “build back better” from its devastating earthquake, because the area serves as the trade hub for the Caribbean nation and home to the largest Haitian community overseas, participants said at WorldCity’s Global Connections forum on Feb. 26.
Businesses, nonprofits, universities and government agencies across South Florida all are mobilizing for Haiti, some working around the clock since the Jan. 12 quake that killed more than 212,000 people, left more than 1 million homeless and destroyed as much as 60 percent of the Haiti’s economic output.
Money transfer giant Western Union, for example, is extending hours at many of its remaining locales in Port-au-Prince and adding locations in the countryside, as residents flee the quake-ravaged capital, said Liz Alicea-Velez, executive vice president for the company’s Latin American and Caribbean region, run from South Florida. One of Western Union’s two bank affiliates in Haiti lost about 30 percent of its staff in the January disaster, a severe blow, she said.
Retailer Gap, meanwhile, has been trucking food from the neighboring Dominican Republic to help feed workers at the Port-au-Prince facility where many of its cloths are produced and which employed 3,500 people before the quake, said Mark D’Sa, senior director of sourcing and production for the Americas, based in South Florida.
Gap aims to boost garment work in Haiti to help the country revive and earn dollars. Prior to the earthquake, it was one of three nations chosen as good locations to expand, Cambodia and Egypt being the other two. Those plans for Haiti have not changed, D’Sa said.
But challenges to rebuilding abound — from logistics hurdles to improving coordination among groups to sustaining commitments long-term and overcoming gaps in leadership within Haiti itself, speakers said at the WorldCity forum.
Chris Taylor, chief executive of Miami-based Tropical Telecom, was in Port-au-Prince when the quake struck. His company operates Access Haiti, a top Internet service provider, and staff members were meeting just before 5 p.m. “We thought someone had crashed into the front of the building,” he said of the sudden jolt. Next, the sky changed from dusk to night-time dark “because there was so much dust in the air.”
When he arrived back at his damaged hotel, Taylor and other guests set up a triage center, ripping hotel bed sheets and using what disinfectant they could find, helping some people survive but seeing others die. “We have to keep up the support going in, because it’s going to be a multi-year effort,” said Taylor, whose Haitian staff lost about 50 relatives in the quake.
Joseph Farrell, president of Fort Lauderdale-based Resolve Marine, said his company moved quickly after the disaster to repair a damaged fuel terminal at the Port-au-Prince seaport and get fuel supplies moving again. The privately-owned terminal now is accepting cargo shipments too, as the docks and channels at the seaport remain crippled, unable to handle the flood of relief supplies to Haiti.
Farrell was humbled by the resilience and determination of the Haitian people in the face of tragedy. “Other places, they’d be rioting. These people are praying,” Farrell said.
Still, he pointed to problems ahead. For example, too much food aid could stymie efforts to expand farming in Haiti. Farrell called for a stronger business link with nonprofits and governments to “build back better,” as Bill Clinton, the former U.S. president and now U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, has said.
The U.S. military’s Southern Command for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in South Florida, has been helping coordinate relief efforts and wants to work more closely with local business for rebuilding, said Bill Lawton, a trade specialist with the U.S. Commerce Department working at Southcom on Haiti.
Outreach already has included deploying a plant from Aqua Sciences of Miami Beach that makes water out of humidity in the air and now supplies water at a university hospital in Port-au-Prince, said Lawton.
Florida International University also is busy, helping both Haitian students in the state as well as Haiti’s university system. FIU has about 600 students from Haiti, who need scholarships and other aid to stay in Florida, now that their families have been killed or their finances hurt by the quake, said Sandra Gonzalez-Levy, senior vice president of external relations.
In addition, FIU is helping Haiti’s largest university, which lost about 200 faculty members and saw nine of its 13 campuses destroyed. Three of the remaining four suffered major damage. FIU aims to develop distance learning programs to offer classes in Haiti through the internet, Gonzalez-Levy said.
Transportation companies in South Florida also are working overtime to haul relief supplies to Haiti and re-start commercial operations there.
American Airlines restored scheduled passenger service to Port-au-Prince on Feb. 19 and aims to resume scheduled cargo flights April 1, said Leo Moreira, a regional manager for American Airlines Cargo in Miami.
Seaboard Marine has re-routed some ships to Dominican ports and trucks goods to Haiti, as it joins with many partners to restore the Port-au-Prince seaport, said Armando Varona, director of sales and marketing for the Miami-based shipping line.
The rebuilding task in Haiti is so huge that Gary Goldfarb, executive vice president of Miami-based logistics company WTDC, suggested that groups in South Florida might dust off their long-awaited business plans for an open Cuba and apply those ambitious proposals instead to Haiti. He also cautioned that if the United States drops the ball, there are other, less nations that might jump in to help — nations less friendly to the United States, such as Cuba abd Venezuela.
WTDC has been working with both the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as Save the Children on Haiti efforts.
Lisa Torres, regional director for nonprofit World Vision, which has sent more than 9 million pounds of food to Haiti since the disaster, summed up the challenge for South Florida to help its neighbor, the poorest country in the Americas even before the horrifying earthquake.
“This is our opportunity as a community to really step up to the plate with leadership,” said Torres, urging an end to the cycle of poverty. “This is our opportunity to build back better in Haiti.”