World
5 Years After Quake, Haiti Still on Shaky Ground
Injured people sit along Delmas road the day after an earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12. (AP Photo/Jorge Cruz)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (USA Today) — After the earthquake swallowed his home and after three years living inside a tent with his wife and two children, Josué Lacrète finally found some peace.
His family is one of 156 chosen to escape the horrific tent cities that covered every inch of open space after that 2010 disaster and move to a new housing development built by the U.S. Agency for International Development and American Red Cross.
Lacrète is thankful for his new house — a sturdy one-bedroom surrounded by plants and flowers donated by foreigners. But he and his neighbors said their freshly painted Haut Damier village was built too far from this capital city to work there, and the promised jobs nearby never materialized.
“A lot of people are professionals here — teachers, lawyers, construction workers,” said Lacrète, 32, a mechanic who had to quit his job at a Port-au-Prince garage when he moved to the new development. “Part of the idea of living here was to take these people and get them jobs in the area. That part has not happened yet.”
