Introduction
Haiti is located in the Caribbean between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea and to the north of the Dominican Republic. It has a tropical semiarid climate; however, it lies in the hurricane belt and is prone to storms, floods, droughts and earthquakes. It has a population of around 9 million people and use French as the official language. With a republic form of government, it gained its independence from France in 1804 and its capital city is at Port-au-Prince (Haggett 456).
Haiti is the poorest country in the northern hemisphere with most of its occupants, in the excess of 80% living below the poverty line. Due to their high dependence on agriculture, they are exposed to the natural calamities such as the floods, droughts and storms. Most of its labor force is unskilled while the country has no regular military forces and has had UN peace keepers maintaining civil order since 2004.
New Orleans on the other hand is an international sea port on the delta of the Mississippi river, with miles of coastline and a humid semi tropical climate regulated by the surrounding waters. Basically, the place is prone to tornados. Its economy is dependent on tourism, oil/gas, the port and ship/boat building and aerospace manufacturing.
The disasters that have affected the two parts of the world have had adverse effects on the lives of people. Dead, maimed and missing people have always been the direct result, while the aftermath has always been violence and looting due to frustrations resulting from unavailable aid or logistical problems in distribution of the little available aid. Moreover, political greed, corruption and selfish interests of some donors have always formed part of the ethical issues arising from disasters. This paper will discuss the ethical and legal issues during catastrophes or disasters, with particular reference to the Haiti earthquake disaster.
Ethics
Ethics may be described as a code of rules that tend to establish what is right or wrong, mainly where human beings have to act in a manner that affects the society’s rights, values, and beliefs. Disaster is an event or series of events that harms or kills a significant number of people or interferes with the day to day lives of the affected individuals and may be natural in origin or caused deliberately or through accidents by man (Zack, 7).
Sources of ethics
Sources of ethical standards are varied because people have different interpretations of ethical standards and what they base them on. Ethics especially in the times of disaster or calamity can be based on utility. Ethical action can be seen as the one that does most good or least harm to all the affected people. This therefore deals with the consequences as an act; if the good outweigh the bad, the act is seen as ethical. The rights approach is another way to determine what is ethical and not. This advocates for the respect of the human moral rights. The fairness or justice approach states that since people are equal; they should be treated equally and proportionately. The common good approach sees the community as having goodness in itself hence our actions should be geared towards contributing to that goodness. Finally, the virtue approach helps people to act to their highest potential character; it guides an individual to act according to the kind of a man he wants to be.
The Haitian and the New Orleans disasters
In 2005 New Orleans was rocked by a devastating hurricane named Katrina that led to severe destruction of property and loss of lives. According to the National Climate Data Center, the hurricane was in the category of one of the strongest storms to ever hit the U.S. this led to 80% of New Orleans being flooded (Lawrimore para. 18). This led to the disruption of the oil industry leading to increased costs of gasoline. Power losses were a common phenomenon and the transport sector was paralyzed due to flooding on the highways and airports. Interstate bridges were also destroyed. There was also the lack of clean drinking water due to the burst in the main pipe that supplied the area. This overall effect of the hurricane led to thousands of deaths and destruction worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
The recent Haiti earthquake, the most powerful to ever hit the country with a magnitude of 7.0 with an epicenter 10 miles from the capital, struck the poor country knocking down buildings and power lines. The death report is in hundreds of thousands and property destruction beyond imagination.
Due to the destruction of the buildings, residential areas and the paralysis of the transport sector in the most affected areas; getting aid to the people who needed and still needs it was rendered almost impossible. The levels of hygiene have dramatically dropped due to lack of clean drinking water and at the beginning, the dead bodies were left to decompose in the places of their death because they could not be reached and disposed of as is norm due to the damaged infrastructure and prioritization which meant that saving of the trapped alive people was more important than burying the already dead ones. However, the aftermath which involved looting, violence and lawlessness seems to be a common phenomenon in both Haiti’s and New Orleans’ disasters (Sherwell and Sawer para. 27).
Ethics in disasters truck areas
The issue of ethics in the disaster struck areas has been of major concern to both the victims and the donors. What some people may see as help to those affected, others may see as an opportunity to further their selfish agendas. The main question when a disaster strikes is if we care, and if we do what we can do to help and how. The earthquake has brought Haiti into the spotlight and this has helped people to see that the devastation was man made as well as natural in origin.
Situation on the ground
The man made part in the Haiti earthquake disaster is accentuated by increased bad governance, poverty and political conflict over time. The government officials are corrupt and seem to be in power so that they can accomplish their own selfish dreams and not lead the people to prosperity. Moreover, the aid may be stolen and diverted from its original targets to be used either for personal gain or stored to be used by a select group of people. This would deny the majority the access to the aid thus not serving the greater good. On the other hand, the works of the construction companies greatly increased the level of devastation. As a result of absence of authority in some areas, building codes were not properly enforced leading to substandard structures in an effort to cut cost. These structures could not withstand the force of the earthquake leading to major and catastrophic collapse (Gaestel para. 3).
Invading instead of helping
Many people may be using the excuse of being in Haiti to help as a guise to further their ideals. The US government, after supporting the coup that brought in the current president, is now using the tragedy to increase its hold and control of Haiti’s political landscape by increasing its presence in the country militarily. Moreover, a large chunk of the aid given ends with the charity organizations as operating and sometimes administrative costs.
Lack of co-operation among the foreign nations bringing in aid leads to the question of what their motive of being there is. The US has been reported of denying other donors the access to its controlled airports. This led to delays as would-be donors had to find other means of transporting the relief foodstuffs and equipments.
Looting, violence and gang wars
The aftermath of the quake has led to violence and looting. Sporadic violence accompanied by stealing and gang related gunfire was witnessed in Haiti as the hungry people fought over for the relief food. This resulted to the elderly and the children being left out as they were pushed aside from the melee. Convoys carrying the relief food had to increase security to guard the supplies from the looters. This was exacerbated by the prison break by 4000 convicts from the port-a-prince main prison. This, together with the failure by the government to bring in law and order, has led to the citizens taking law into their own hands (Sherwell and Sawer para. 18).
The lawlessness hampered the relief efforts for the volunteers had to at times seek cover from the unruly looters and gangs. This included the physicians leaving their patients unattended in the makeshift clinics, some who had life threatening injuries or had just had an operation. This led to deaths of the looters as the police opened fire on them in an effort to calm them.
Due to the lack of order and the increasing rates of lawlessness much of the aid does not reach the targeted people at the grassroots. This is because the channels for distributing the foodstuffs and other materials collapse due to the lack of law and order. This leads to these materials stock piling in the warehouses and stores because distribution becomes almost impossible (Learning, Briggs and Chen 182).
Dilemma of triage
During a disaster, there is a problem of deciding who has to be served first especially in the cases of medical emergency. Since in most of the times the patients are much more than the paramedics, there is an ethical dilemma of determining who to treat in terms of priority. Triage is the medical screening and grouping of the people affected health-wise in the cases of calamity or catastrophe so as to prioritize the ones who need the medical attention more and to who it would be of the greatest use (Zack 14).
In the cases of a disaster, those needing medical care are divided into three groups which are those not expected to survive even after receiving medical care, the ones who can and will recover without treatment for they are not seriously injured, and those who need treatment immediately for their survival. This guides the physicians in concentrating on those that they know are potential survivors. The ethics behind this is the question of how the doctors accurately assess the level of need; however, ethical and legal codes in cases of disaster call for unrestricted aid to all recipients despite their race, nationality or any other affiliations on the basis of need (Ciottone 64).
Ethics of calamity
The rules of ethics in times of calamity and disasters have led to studies on how people behave in the times of need. Some of the scholars argue that these rules of ethics in the times of disasters do not apply and have come up with their own rules for the catastrophic situations. These include price gouging, the three moral situations, the criteria for taking things for personal use and the theory of shooting the looters, as well as the theory of looting in the absence of the state.
In making an ethical decision, one has to have an ethical issue and recognize it. He needs to examine whether his decision or the prevailing situation could be having a negative effect on someone or to some group. There is also need to determine whether the decision is between two good alternatives or a good and a bad one. The relevant facts in the case are important for they help in making the decision. The person also needs to examine if the information held about the problem is enough to make the right choice, and if not enough, where else he can get more information on the subject. Moreover, the people who have are involved and will be affected by the outcome of the decisions made need to be considered. He should also have an idea of why they are involved and how the outcomes will affect them. Indeed, evaluation of other alternatives should be done in order to determine the option that will be more suitable for the given situation and then make decisions based on these facts.
Conclusion
The way we deal with ethical matters differs from individual to individual because what other people may see as ethical may be unethical to us. All these factors like looting and violence that happened and may be still happening in Haiti happened also in New Orleans after the devastation caused by Katrina. This shows that in the time of crisis most people are motivated to act in a way that is beneficial to them with no regard for others. Ethics helps and holds sway in some cases especially where a degree of calm is present in order to give the decision maker enough time to study the situation; but in the cases of disaster and chaos, the rule of the jungle for the survival of the fittest kicks in and people become more vulnerable unlike when the rule and order are put in place. In situations of disaster, there is always little time to make distinction on who should be aided or not since making the wrong move may have an adverse effect on the victims, while unsatisfactory intervention may trigger social vices such as violence, looting or even civil war; thus worsening the situation.
Works Cited
Ciottone, Gregory R. Disaster medicine. NY, Elsevier Health Sciences. 2006.
Gaestel A. “Engineers press for earthquake-safe infrastructure in Haiti to avoid future catastrophes” Media Global: Voice of the Global South. 2010. Web.
Haggett, Peter. Encyclopedia of World Geography, Volume 1. Edition2. NY, Marshall Cavendish. 2001.
Leaning, Jennifer et al. Humanitarian Crisis: The Medical and Public health Response. London, Harvard University Press. 1999.
Sherwell, Philip & Sawer, Patrick. ”Haiti earthquake: looting and gun-fights break out.” Telegraph.co.uk. 2010. Web.
Zack, Naomi. Ethics for disaster. NY, Rowan and Littlefield publishers Inc. 2009.