Statistics are a moving target in earthquake-shattered Haiti, shifting as often as the unsteady ground.
On the 13th day of the Haitian catastrophe, these numbers seem the most reliable:
The United Nations reported the government has confirmed
111,481 deaths in four departments (the equivalent of states or
provinces) and 609,000 homeless in metropolitan Port-au-Prince. These numbers are preliminary.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that as many as 1 million people may leave quake-ravaged urban areas for the countryside.
A very preliminary estimate by the Haitian government on what it needs to rebuild the country is $3 billion. Haiti’s Minister of Tourism Patrick Delatour said that number could “triple or multiply.”
The breakdown is: $2 billion for new housing, rebuilding schools and health facilities; $500 million for rehabilitating infrastructure and $500 million to restore government buildings, courthouses and the prison in Port-au-Prince.
The Haitian recovery plan will be presented Monday at a donors conference in Canada. It was first discussed Saturday by Haitian architects and academics from Boston University under the shade of a tree in Petionville. Attending the Montreal meeting will be Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and representatives of donor nations, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
The damage estimate in Haiti was placed in the “low single-digits billions of dollars” by Eqecat, a catastrophe-risk modeling firm in Oakland, Calif.
There are 20,000 tents in the country. Haiti needs 100,000, the International Organization for Migration says.
In the aftermath of the quake, estimates of the dead
have ranged up to well over 200,000. Aid organizations and the
government are supposed to be coordinating their numbers, but
communications have been a big problem, with each group not checking
with the other on numbers and facts, or aid groups quoting their own
figures. As a result, statistics have varied wildly.
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(c) 2010, The Miami Herald.
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