As the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season began in June, Haitian emergency management authorities and humanitarian organizations assessed a preparedness situation that was, by any honest measure, wholly inadequate for the risks the country faced. Haiti’s combination of geographic vulnerability, environmental degradation, poverty, and institutional weakness made it one of the most disaster-prone countries on earth, and each hurricane season brought the realistic possibility of a catastrophe that would exceed the country’s response capacity.
The civil protection system was chronically underfunded, understaffed, and dependent on international support for any significant emergency response. Early warning systems existed but reached only a portion of the population, particularly in rural and coastal communities where the risk was highest. Evacuation infrastructure in low-lying areas was minimal, and the shelters designated for displaced populations during storm events were often inadequate in number, capacity, and condition.
The COVID-19 pandemic added a new layer of complexity to hurricane preparedness planning in 2020. Evacuation to communal shelters would create exactly the kind of crowded indoor conditions that facilitated COVID transmission. Public health and emergency management imperatives were in direct conflict, and the resources needed to manage both simultaneously were not available.
International humanitarian organizations pre-positioned emergency supplies in Haiti before the peak of the hurricane season, drawing on lessons from previous storms about the importance of having resources in-country before disaster struck rather than scrambling to assemble them afterward. But the scale of pre-positioned supplies was insufficient for a major storm, and the political and security situation complicated access to the areas most likely to be affected.