Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
Mirebalais, located 30 miles north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is home to the largest solar powered hospital in the world. The hospital opened in 2013 and runs 100% off of 1,800 solar panels and what’s more, is even able to sell energy back to the grid. This development is huge – especially as frequent and massive power outages continue to plague the struggling nation. Resultantly, solar panels, aside from being more energy-efficient, remove the hospital from the threat of potentially deadly power outages.
Hewitt struggles balancing the tension between the innovation and horrific consequences from disaster. Hewitt argues that there is every reason to believe that many disasters could have prevented or at least reduced. “This is what gives to hazard and disaster studies a positive orientation. To help extend and improve safety and relief of suffering is surely the only acceptable purpose of research into extreme harm.” Hewitt urges us to study disaster in order that we may prevent it.
Bergman touches on the dichotomies of disasters as well. He presents different case studies on how Hurricane Katrina exposed the failure of American social justice and how the Mississippi flood shed light on issues of race. Bergman writes, “Disaster, Rozario seems to suggest, was both destructive and constructive – its own most powerful tonic.” Disasters, Bergman continues, should be understood as triggering mechanisms that reveal imperfections in both environmental and social systems. And we are left to decide how to pick up the pieces.
Bill Clinton’s mantra in Haiti has been “build back better.” The Mirebalis hospital is a model of innovation that emerged from the deadly ashes of the horrific Haitian earthquake. We celebrate its development but morn its roots. So progress can emerge from disaster – but when it comes at the cost of spilled blood, we are caught in a balancing act, reconciling the price we have paid for innovation.