James Whitmee

I arrived in Haiti early this morning. There are a lot of similarities about the place with West Africa. The striking thing, of course, is the number of collapsed buildings which are all over the city, and there are refugee camps on all of the spare bits of land. There is very little clearance of any sort taking place and it looks like the earthquake has just happened, rather than 9 months ago.

The commercial market is dominated by the NGOs, most of which lost their buildings or have moved out because of the risk of buildings which have not collapsed doing so. They have generally ended up in temporary cabins on Log Base which is the UN camp out beyond the airport.

Although I am not specifically looking at the office market I believe it is very expensive because of the scarcity of buildings which are of good quality and in structural order. I believe rents may be up to $25 /sq m /month. People will have to be careful which buildings they take in the future as there are signs that some less scrupulous property owners may be patching up damaged buildings which probably should come down.

Here are some photos that I took in the city centre of historic buildings some of which have collapsed, the most notable of which include the Presidential Palace and the Catholic Cathedral. The Presidential Palace is a very solid looking building but as you can see from the photo one of the domes has slipped (on the right).To the rear of the building the structure is almost totally down.

                                                                      Presidential Palace

                                                                 "Gingerbread" Houses

                                                                   Catholic Cathedral