Interview with Flashpoints correspondent from Haiti, Kevin Pina, a useful counterbalance to the distorted corporate media coverage of ongoing natural and unnatural disasters in Haiti.

Flashpoints Radio Interviews Correspondent Kevin Pina on Haiti Floods, September 24, 2004

Solange Echeverria: Hurricane Jeanne’s wrath continued to wreak havoc in Haiti, with hundreds of thousands of homeless, over 1,100 dead, and over 1,200 still missing. And these numbers continue to rise. The calamitous combination of nature’s fury and political upheaval has been relentless and the human cost inhumane. Once again, Kevin Pina joins us for a quick update. I know that you are coming down with the flu, so I appreciate this. Can you give us a quick update in terms of what is going on there, the potential for disease, infections, what’s going on there?

Kevin Pina: Well the relief efforts are proceeding slowly. There’s just disaster upon disaster, and most of this has to do with lack of infrastructure in the North of Haiti; we discussed the reasons for that last night.* Hospital Justimieme [sp], which is the largest hospital in the North, in that particular area, in Cap Haitien, caught fire yesterday afternoon, more than 400 most of them children, patients, were forced to evacuate the building. Half of the hospital which, as I said, which is the largest hospital in that entire region has burned. It’s not clear what the cause of the fire was, but there just seems to be disaster upon disaster. Most of it seems to be occurring because of lack of infrastructure, lack of experienced people on the ground who have experience with relief work, people who can handle and process this devastating event.

I’ve received several very disturbing calls today, in a different story. I want to emphasize that I don’t have final confirmation on this but spoke with some family members who have relatives who are political prisoners, Lavalas political prisoners, who were in the prison in Gonaives, and they are concerned, because they are telling me that their loved ones were never released, and they may have drowned in their jail cells, which of course would be just another dimension to this incredible tragedy. I want to emphasize again that we have reporters who are on the ground there now who are looking at this seriously, trying to get to these family members, trying to make inquiries with the local police in Gonaives. The local police, of course, who are being run by the former military, and by the self-appointed Mayor, Butteur Metayer, who was called by Colin Powell a “gangster