November 25, 2016
The team continues to assess damage in Sud, working now in Les Anglais. While they work life goes on for the Haitians in Les Anglais, especially the children. They have been full with curiosity as the UAV flies overhead, and they gather around as it takes off and lands. The team is progressing well, and look to continue their productive deployment this weekend in the Grand-Anse department.
Photo of houses in western Les Anglais that fell within the storm surge zone.
A group of mostly children gather as the UAV lands.
A child playing with an old tire, a very common toy in Haiti.
A group of mostly children gather as the UAV lands.
A child playing with an old tire, a very common toy in Haiti.
November 24, 2016
While here in the United States we are celebrating Thanksgiving, the team in Haiti is hard at work continuing to assess the damage from Hurricane Matthew in Haiti. Over the past several days the team has been assessing damage in the departments of Sud and Grand-Anse. In Sud the team has targeted the communities of Les Cayes, Port-Salut, Roch-a-Bateau, Port-a-Piment, Charonnieres, Les Anglais, and La Cahouane. In Grand-Anse, the team has visited Abricots, Bonbon and Jeremie and will continue to survey in these areas today.
Sud department in Haiti
Grand Anse department in Haiti
The team is observing wide ranges of damage to the local structures. Within the storm surge area, many buildings are completely destroyed. Outside of the storm surge area, roof damage is the most common.
Nursing school in the storm surge zone was completely destroyed
Typical house with masonry walls and metal roof destroyed in the storm surge zone. Most homes lost the roof in nearby areas.
A pediatrics hospital on an exposed hill was designed to resist a Category 5 hurricane and was undamaged and fully operational after the hurricane.
November 19, 2016
The team arrived safely in Port-a-Prince, Haiti at approximately 11am EST. They met their local contact and loaded the personnel and equipment into vehicles to begin the drive out to the western peninsula. Stay tuned for further updates.
Grand Anse department in Haiti
- Driving past Three-Hands-Park near the Port-a-Prince airport
Press Release
UF Associate Professor of civil engineering Dr. David O. Prevatt will join a Notre Dame University post-hurricane damage survey team to assess damage to masonry buildings in Haiti following last month’s Hurricane Matthew. Dr. Prevatt leads a UF team which will travel to Haiti on 19 November 2016 and join Team Leader Associate Professor Dr. Tracy Kijewski-Correa and other University of Notre Dame faculty (Assoc. Professor Andrew Kennedy, and Dr. Alexandros Taflandis), and Dr. Scott D. Schiff, Director of Projects of Applied Technology Council. The team will conduct a multi-hazard investigation of the performance of structures affected by the extreme winds and storm surge from the hurricane. They will work along the south coast of the Tiburon Peninsula from Les Cayes to the extreme western tip, including Dame-Marie and Jérémie, covering the hardest-hit region where the eye of Hurricane Matthew made landfall on 4 October 2016 as a Category 4 Hurricane with maximum sustained wind speeds of 145 mph.
Before and after satellite imagery of Jeremie, Haiti (Source: Reuters).
Read the full announcement here. Stay tuned to this blog for updates from the team as time and connectivity allow.
