Engineering News-Record’s Senior Editor Tom Sawyer, and Jenna McKnight, deputy news director for McGraw-Hill Construction, spent a week in Haiti in mid-April staying with a local family and traveling throughout the Port-au-Prince area to meet with Haitian refugees and others already engaged in the start of reconstruction, as well as with representatives of foreign aid organizations and U.S. officials. One long-sought document that came to hand during the visit is the Haitian government’s Action Plan for National Recovery and Development, described below.
Navy Capt. Jim Wink said, “Right now they have the attention of the world.” Wink, chief engineer for Joint Task Force (JTF) Haiti, spoke to ENR in his command tent beside the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince. “Donors have pledges of $9.8 billion [USD], but they are going to need to have meaningful projects, with some level of confidence they are going to be executed responsibly before they will put that money up. But if properly applied, it could make things a lot better here,” he said.