It feels like many months have passed since we last crossed the border into Haiti, and a lifetime worth of emotions is beginning to hit my brain.

Our crew met for the last time at the Red Cross camp:

And packed up our gear for the trip across the border:

As our crew of four silently stares outside the minivan windows, we can see the landscape change from the Port au Prince region’s dry, treeless horizons to the green and lush paradise of the Dominican Republic.

We never had much time to think while running these long days of work over the past month in Port-au-Prince (P.O.P). We all feel like it is too early to leave our friends behind in the dusty chaos of Haiti’s capital.

Don’t worry Haitian friends, we have enough images in our psychological luggage to knead our brains for weeks to come; we won’t forget your plight as we settle back into our comfortable Toronto lifestyles.

The aid agencies have much work ahead of them, and there are still many more stories that need to be told by the media before Haiti can slip out of international attention.

Our crew will be back in Haiti within six months to document the progress of the country’s reconstruction. Knowing we’ll return helps me with the guilt of “jumping ship” so soon.

As we drive through a barren valley not 20km from P.O.P, Stefan breaks the silence in the van: “Why couldn’t the quake have happened just a few kilometers east? Why did it have to happen right near the most populated city, in the poorest country of the region?” It’s true, when you think about it, what are the odds?

The explanation is easy for religious extremists: “God wanted to punish the sinners of Haiti”. But after spending weeks amongst this country’s “sinners”, I can tell you that the Devil himself would blush in shame for having anything to do with destruction on such a scale.

In a way, we all need an explanation. We want someone, something to blame it on. But unlike wars, there is no one to blame. No corporation, government or organization sold any weapons responsible for this. No one financed revolutionaries to do the killing on their behalf.

From watching the rescue teams competing for the limelight, military public relations officers courting the press into reporting every good deed, I can understand why the international community and politicians are so drawn to natural disasters. They are a great opportunity to do good in the public eye, an a-political PR opportunity for those in power.

A natural disaster is a ‘clean’ calamity. It allows us to forget about the shady trade agreements and economic stands by the international financial institutions that contributed to the poverty of Haiti before the 12th. (I love to read Le Monde Diplomatique for an alternative view on world events).

To me, a natural disaster can be attributed to fate, but not the impoverishment of a population prior to it.

As we drive closer to Santo Domingo and leave Haiti behind, I’m stunned by the difference in wealth and landscapes between these two countries, made up of the same people, living on the same island. What happened to the strong and independent Haiti?

One thing that really struck me from the beginning was the near absence of anger amongst the victims of the earthquake. I talked to Haitians who were angry at the aid coming in too slowly, angry for being forgotten in their camps, and frustrated from hunger and thirst.

But overall, it was as if many of them had accepted the fatality of the earthquake. I would hear phrases like, “This is how it is, this is life”, or “there is nothing to do about it, we must move on”.

Will it be possible to build a better Haiti, with the country now starting from scratch? I believe the Haitians have what it takes. But will the international community really give them a chance once the show is over? Will they cancel the debt?

Toronto: what was that dream I just awoke from? Can you repeat the question?

PTV Productions gave me a very broad mandate as “Web Producer” for the Inside Disaster website. My role was to create portraits of the daily lives of earthquake survivors, rather than focusing on the news stories of the hour.

My goal was to give a voice to the common people of Haiti, to get the public to know them as human beings. I tried to do this with the utmost respect and love, to find dignity when the food lines and desperation would mask it.

Veteran journalists told me the first week after the earthquake was more difficult than anything they had experienced in twenty years on the job. Others talked about photographing “Holocaust images” of the kind the world hasn’t seen for sixty years.

Yet despite the hardships of the situation, one thing in particular was very different from my previous experiences abroad. The media had unlimited access to virtually everything in post-earthquake Haiti. The aid organizations, the citizens and the military understood the importance of getting the stories out to the world in order to bring in as much help as possible. Last year, working in the Amazon forest, I would have guns drawn on me just for taking out my camera, but in P.O.P., no one would ask me any questions as I wandered into any hospital, or into any situation.

In the streets and the camps, people wanted to tell their stories to the world. I spent a good part of my days simply listening to people. The challenge wasn’t to find a story, but rather to stick to only one and not get sidetracked — especially since I had to meet my deadline of uploading a story every night.

Upon my return to Toronto, I’ve been asked in interviews and conversations what it was like for me personally, what marked me, what was the hardest part, and so on.

While I was there, I wished I was a doctor so I could save lives. I wished I was a pilot flying in food to feed people in the camps. I wished I was a Red Cross logistics manager so I could give people tents, or a chemist capable of purifying water.

But I was only a media guy with a camera. I had to play my role by telling stories rather than saving lives. And that was difficult when I was visiting places that hadn’t seen any help yet, and I had no help to offer them.

I hope my work helped to put a human face on survivors, to share the urgency for help. Journalists probably convinced many potential donors with their stories. I took as many pictures as I could and told as many relevant stories as I could.

But as you try to focus on one thing, as you try not to spread yourself too thin, you end up ignoring other stories, ignoring people you could have helped. These memories haunt me now that I have time to replay all the events in my head.

It was Friday the 15th, just a few days after the earthquake. The city was still in shock and the street looked like a scene from the Second World War. Buildings in rubble, people were walking aimlessly in the streets, looking for loved ones within the destruction.

I was in front of the Hopital General, where people had been carrying in the wounded for days. The place was very quiet, and the hospital wasn’t fully operational yet. The only noise covering the silent agony came from the engines of trucks dumping bodies in front of the morgue, right beside the hospital.

On the sidewalk in front of me, less than twenty meters away from the growing pile of corpses rotting in the sun, were a handful of hospital beds holding the wounded. Many more of the injured and dying lay right on the ground around the beds, waiting for care one hoped may come.

I was just getting my first glimpse of the size of the catastrophe. I had barely slept in the last three nights, and like a robot, all I could do was take pictures of this unreal sight. I remember the deafening silence weighing on my shoulders, the sun beating down on my head so hard that my right ear would buzz as I tried to breathe through my mask. This was a completely hypnotizing nightmare, something humans were not built to see. Like a machine, I would trigger my camera, not really looking at what I was capturing.

My lens led me to two wounded girls lying alive right there in the thick of the smell of death.

Someone had dropped them on a blowup mattress right there on the sidewalk. They were waiting for a doctor, without a blanket or clothes to cover them. While submerged in the darkest surroundings I have ever known, it’s the young girl’s naked breast that stood out, that caught my eye.

Surrounded by death, despair and destruction, in this moment, there was nothing more beautiful and precious than the sight of this flowering young woman, nothing more fragile, nothing more innocent, she was hope itself, she was future motherhood.

The image of this girl shook me out my stupor, and woke me from the nightmare around me. (to find beauty everywhere would be key to enduring the next weeks in P.O.P).

My friend and colleague Stanley was standing in the middle of it, all completely traumatized. His own family was missing since the earthquake, and being surrounded by the dead and dying outside the hospital had overwhelmed him: he told me he wanted to go to Carrefour to find them now, immediately. And so we ran…

Days later, I saw the snapshot of the girls on my hard drive. I could have helped these girls, talked to them, gotten to know them. I could have slipped a 50 dollar bill in a guards pocket to make sure they would be taken care of. I could have moved them to a better spot, jut have given them water.

Now, I’ll never know if they made it. There were among the hundreds of thousands of people that needed help that day. But these two had somehow called out for me, and I had run away.

It was a great privilege to be able to tell the stories of the Haitian people, and also a great responsibility. The beauty and strength of my fellow humans never stopped to amaze me throughout my travels, something I surely expected to see much of in a disaster zone.

How can I explain that the horrors I have witnessed would soon be replaced by triumphant humanity? What I carry on my way back to Canada is a rather refreshing feeling of humility, a growing love and faith in what we are capable of as a human society.

I was not alone this past month. I want to thank Emmanuel Midi and Johnny Pierrot for relentlessly and courageously supporting and accompanying me to all the crazy places we went to visit. Back in Toronto, Katie McKenna, Yshia Wallace and the PTV team were working endless days editing, posting, and promoting the blogs.

Nadine, thank you for taking me along on this life changing experience and for allowing me to be part of this project.

Stefan, Simon, Paul, Tony, I feel fortunate to have witnessed first-hand what the cream of Canadian documentary filmmaking is capable of.

And dear readers, thank you for all of your pertinent and encouraging comments that gave me energy and inspiration throughout these challenging weeks.

I can’t wait to go back to Haiti.

The distinction between these two kinds of crises is useful in understanding what types of humanitarian and political responses are appropriate to different kinds of emergencies; but it can also lead to an oversimplification of how natural disasters are presented and understood.

The 7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12th was a geological phenomena that would have caused damage in any country.  But oversimplifying the events as a “natural disaster” alone conceals the complex political, social, demographic and economic conditions that contributed to the magnitude of destruction.

The human choices that contributed to this catastrophe are an essential part of how this story came to unfold in Haiti. In the onslaught of media coverage about  the earthquake, it is worth questioning how “natural” the disaster really is.

Photo Credit: BBC 2004

The reality that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere has been regularly highlighted by journalists and aid workers, but what does this fact actually mean? The truth is that the structural inequalities in Haiti run far deeper than the foundations of it’s fallen buildings.

Two centuries ago, Haiti became the worlds first independent black republic following a rebellion that ended a brutal period of Spanish and French colonization and enslavement. A legacy of poverty, exploitation and political instability has continued to plague Haiti, and the consequences have been compounded by recurring natural disasters such as the 2008 hurricane, the 2004 and 2007 tropical storms and the 2004 floods which together have killed thousands.

Photo Credit: BBC 2004

Like most developing countries, there is an enormous gap between the rich and the poor in Haiti. Approximately half of country’s wealth is controlled by 1% of the french speaking population, while 80% of the Creole speaking population lives below the poverty line.

Over half of the population lives in conditions of abject poverty. A recent article in the Globe and Mail quotes pre-quake surveys showing that just over half of inhabitants had variable access to electricity, and only 1 in 5 residents had access to piped water in downtown Port-au-Prince.

Haiti’s political history is equally grim.  The country endured a brutal dictatorship under Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, or “Baby Doc” whose oppressive 29-year “kleptocracy”  killed thousands. American occupation, rebellion, UN intervention, and continuous military and foreign-backed “regime change” (most notably of democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Artiside), round out the recent political history of the country.

The economy has not fared much better. Haiti’s agricultural and manufacturing sectors have been adversely affected by corruption, mass deforestation, trade embargoes and unequal incorporation into global trade networks. Add on the imposition of neo-liberal economic reforms, debt repayments and weak or non-existent social security programs and you’re left with a series of seriously unfortunate human-induced events and a long list of responsible parties.  However just because Haiti has a history filled with political and economic challenges not not mean that the country is destined to remain fragile and poor.

Photo Credit: BBC 2004

It is easier to think of the crisis in Haiti as a result of an uncontrollable force of nature, but a closer look at the situation indicates that there is much more to the story. It is certainly simpler to talk about “rebuilding” Haiti back better- but how far will the Haitian government and the international community go to tackle the structural problems at the roots of this crisis to ensure that the outpouring of foreign aid  and assistance amount to more than a short-term band-aid solution?

Humanitarian values have long been associated with notions of solidarity and the impetus to save strangers and ameliorate their suffering. In crises such as natural disasters or complex emergencies, the motivation of humanitarian workers on the ground and those watching safely from home is often to “witness authentically the reality of humanity” and provide some type of support, be it medical, monetary or through other means. But when does “witnessing” trespass into voyeurism and violate the dignity of  those that we are seeking to help? Does image upon image of piled dead bodies actually increase our comprehension of the tragedy as it unfolds?

Photo: Globe and Mail

Does it do a disservice to the individual lives that were lost by displaying them in such an anonymous and desperate state?

Photo: Globe and Mail

Does it intrude on and exploit private moments of mourning?

Photo: Carel Pedre

Or as an earlier post argued- would failing to show such images be a censorship of the truth?

In 1997, Michael Ignatieff wrote the following about the media and the coverage of humanitarian catastrophes:

“On the one hand, television has contributed to the breakdown of the barriers of citizenship, religion, race, and geography that once divided our moral space into those we were responsible for and those who were beyond our ken. On the other hand, it makes us voyeurs of the suffering of others, tourists amid their landscapes of anguish. It brings us face-to-face with their fate, while obscuring the distances–social, economic, moral–that lie between us.”

The role of the media in human catastrophe’s has expanded as we gain 24 hour access to news and images on our TVs, computers and mobile phones. At times, the media’s role can be controversial and the position as a “documenter” of tragedy is not an enviable one. However the responsibility to consider the interests of the victims lies not only with those covering the story, but is an obligation that extends to us at home. It is important to familiarize ourselves with the context of Haiti beyond the earthquake and to ensure that when the next “big story” or disaster happens, our gaze and efforts are not averted from the developments unfolding there.

Aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Globe & Mail.

The Globe and Mail calls the 2000’s an “unprecedented” decade of natural disasters, affecting an  average of 250 million people per year. You can check out their interactive slideshow on their website.

Scary stat: Oxfam predicts that by 2015, that number will increase to 375 million per year.

The G&M’s inclusion of Hurricane Katrina and Burma’s Cyclone Nargis remind us that while the initial weather events may be “natural”, how governments prepare for and respond to them adds an entirely human dimension to their overall impact.

Living in southern Ontario I’ve been immune to most kinds of natural disaster.  In many parts of the world people aren’t as lucky.  Especially in Asia, where natural disasters are a way of life, and countries lie in the path of storm tracks nicknamed Typhoon Alley.

CGI rendering of a tsunami wave

On average the Philippines sees 20 typhoons a year.  What I’m doing now – waking up each morning to track tropical storms, earth tremors, active volcanoes and other disaster alerts is what relief workers around the globe do day in and day out, religiously.  I’ve become partial to these warning sites:  Humanitarian News, Tropical Storm Risk, Emergency and Disaster Information Service.

With all of this information available to help us predict when, where and how bad; it’s sort of surprising that every year tens of thousands of people are killed or injured by natural disasters.  Cyclones are tracked for days and sometimes weeks before they run aground.  Tsunamis take anywhere from one to six hours to reach land after being initiated by an earthquake or landslide.  Floods, resulting from weeks or months of heavy rainfall, account for more disasters than any other type of natural calamity each year.   So why with so many early warning signs are so many people suffering?  And why do the worst disasters seem to hit the poorest parts of the world repeatedly?  Germanwatch recently published a climate risk index for countries susceptible to extreme weather conditions Top 10 At Risk Countries.  The top 10 are among the poorest countries in the world.

Seen safely from high ground, a wave of the 1960 Chilean tsunami pours into Onagawa, Japan. From USGS.

Four of the deadliest tsunamis in known history have happened around Japan. In fact the word Tsunami is Japanese for “tsu” meaning harbor, and “nami” meaning wave.  But a comparison of the impact of two recent Asian tsunamis one in the Sea of Japan and another in Papua New Guinea seems to demonstrate a clear link between poverty and disaster.  In Japan a 1993 tsunami killed about 14 percent of the at-risk population, where as five years later in Papua New Guinea 40 percent perished.  The difference:  the Japanese were educated about tsunamis, they knew what to watch for, and they had alert systems and evacuation plans.  Papua New Guinea had none ofthese things.  Yet information on tsunamis has been available for decades, Surviving a Tsunami – Lessons from Chile, Hawaii and Japan. If we had the knowledge then why did 300,000 people have to die in the Southern Indian Ocean?

All of this waiting and watching leaves me wondering…why do we keep making the same mistakes?

Front page thumbnail photo by Barbara Davidson.

Ten years in the field making documentaries has taught me to prepare for the worst, so naturally the first priority was to hire a really good team.   Probably the only reason I can sleep at night is because I’m going to face the unknown with four people who’ve shot in just about every situation imaginable.

I’ve worked with Tony Wannamaker filming out of planes and helicopters; racing full sail over open ocean and submerged 30 meters under water.  Our soundman, Paul Adlaf, is a technical wizard and can custom fabricate whatever we need.

This shoot poses serious problems in providing electricity for our power hungry video cameras, computers, modem, satellite phone and audio equipment. To provide a flexible back up solution to our Honda EU1000 generator, Paul created a modular power package.

The modular power package: two Gel Cell batteries, a 115/230 volt battery charger, 24Watt fold up solar panels, three DC/AC Inverters, and a slew of plug adapters.

It consists of two Gel Cell batteries, a 115/230 volt battery charger, 24Watt fold up solar panels, three DC/AC Inverters, and a slew of plug adapters.  This modular approach gives us the flexibility to charge up the batteries when power is available and run all the gear for days without it.

Stefan Randstrom, our second unit DOP, has shot in nearly every country we might go to, and survived some pretty hairy situations.  When his boat capsized in the Philippines he spent 18 hours treading water, before he and his team were rescued.  Second unit sound is Simon Paine.  I’ve never worked with Simon, but when I saw a photo of him standing in a rubber dinghy, moving alongside a canoe, and booming boat to boat – I figured he was our guy.

All five of us are on call to follow the Red Cross into a disaster zone, and that means we could go anywhere in the world.  We don’t know what kind of disaster we’ll film, but we know that when the call comes we’ll be on a plane in less than 12 hours.  Our mission is to stick with the Red Cross relief workers on the ground, and follow the action.  To do that we should travel light and move fast – but being ready for anything requires stuff.

Working in the aftermath of a disaster zone for 30 days, we’ll need to be self-sufficient.  The last thing we want to do is take from a country that’s just been hit by a disaster.  That means supplying our own food, water, electricity and communications.  We’ve packed MREs (meals ready to eat), water filters, generators, and satellite phones.  We have first aid kits; ready with splints, needles and compresses.  Malaria pills may be in our kit depending on where we go, and because the location is unknown we’ve all been shot up with a cocktail of vaccines. For most documentary shoots, we wouldn’t need to bring any of these items, but this isn’t a typical shoot.

In addition to the “survival gear”, we need the tools of the trade – the recording equipment.  In the age of High Definition, the gear necessary to make a broadcast quality documentary isn’t lightweight or easy to carry.  At the end of our shoot we expect to have about 300 hours of footage.  Reading Nico’s blog, I’m envious of his lone backpack.

We’ve got tripods, lights, booms, sound mixers, a case of lithium batteries, and the carefully chosen Sony XDCAM.

Sony XDCAM

Given the unknown conditions, we needed a camera that could operate in all extremes – wet, dusty, hot and cold.  Two years ago when I was in Haiti, our tape camera failed.  Excessive desertification has turned parts of the island into a dustbowl, and after 10 days of filming the heads jammed.  With no heads to jam, the XDCAM should side step these types of problems.  The laser discs are also more durable than tape; some testimonials on the Internet go so far as to claim that the discs are indestructible.  Our 50GB stock probably couldn’t survive being rolled over by a 2-ton truck, but we can wade through floodwaters and not have to worry. Having two geared up, self-sufficient documentary crews equals a lot of baggage – not ideal when ground transport is scarce and moving quickly is a must.  To keep pace with what’s happening on the ground, we’ve packed everything in modules.  Depending on the situation we’ll be able to grab and go, and with any luck we’ll keep a base camp throughout the shoot.

I’m sure there’s some eventuality we haven’t considered.  Hopefully it’s something we can adapt for.  If you know an unknown we haven’t thought of, let us know in the comments below.

It’s the most important job you’ve never heard of.

The Red Cross FACT team arrives in-country during the emergency phase of a response operation.  Their humanitarian assessment work allows ground operations to begin while mobilizing the Red Cross’s longer-term human resource support through Emergency Response Units.

FACT members come from 70 different countries and have expertise in relief, logistics, health, nutrition, public health and epidemiology, water and sanitation, finance, administration, psychological support, as well as language capabilities.

The FACT team works alongside and oversees the Red Cross Emergency Response Units (ERUs).  ERUs were created to fill the gaps created by an emergency as a result of temporary overload of existing systems.

ERUs provide essential services in nine different types of  specialized units: they provide health,  water and sanitation services, and support major disaster operations with logistics, IT and telecommunications and relief. The units are self-sufficient for one month and can stay up to four months in the country.

The “Inside Disaster” documentary series will follow the Red Cross FACT and ERU deployments to the next major natural disaster.  In the series and on this website, you’ll meet FACT and ERU members like the ones featured in the Inside Disaster documentary trailer.

How and when are the FACT and ERUs deployed?

When the affected country requests assistance from the International Federation of the Red Cross, the Secretariat alerts FACT members all over the world through SMS, requesting their availability within 12 – 24 hours.

Within 48 hours, the team arrives on the ground.  Working with their in-country counterparts, they compile an assessment report and plan of action, recommending the most appropriate Red Cross/Red Crescent intervention.  Working with the Red Cross Emergency Response Units, the FACT Team coordinates the roll-out of health, water and sanitation services to the affected populations.

The Inside Disaster documentary crew will follow the FACT team throughout their mission, and document the recovery process in the months to follow.  Web producer Nico Jolliet will be taking photos, blogging and shooting mini-documentaries from the field throughout the initial deployment, and you’ll be able to find all his content on the Inside Disaster website.

You can read more about the Red Cross Field Assessment and Coordination Teams and the Emergency Response Units on the IFRC’s website.