slopeside in Haiti

I have had two images thrashing about in my mind this past week. As a woman, daughter, and a mother, one of these images will likely stalk my memory forever. It is the picture of a young child in Haiti cuddling up to the dead body of her mother.

Her mother’s body is one of thousands like it lying in an open field. The life crushed out of it by falling debris and piles of rubble. The child is asleep alongside her parent, the one responsible for caring and calming her. Lost, confused, and snuggling tightly to the one place she knows to go for solace. The body of her mom.

Haiti, as we are well aware, has captured the hopes, prayers, and philanthropic efforts of the world. I’ve found myself crying during BBC reports and an hour later shutting off all the news and shooing my children away from the television. I explain that the images they might see are too graphic for a child their agee to understand. Ironic really because the tragedy involves the lives of children their ages.

The other image is closer to home. Of looming mudslides in Southern California. As unseasonably strong rain beats the landscape scarred last year by fire, mudslides threaten homes and lives. Turns out the vegetation that earlier wildfires gobbled up in smoke is necessary to keep the earth connected to itself. Without foliage to keep it all in place, without root systems, fallen logs and greenery to keep the mud in place, it will slide and take out homes and people in its murky wake.

I imagine my daughter’s frilly pink bedroom sliding forever into a muddy hillside.

Haiti and California have more than just the fear of earthquakes in common. The threat of disaster from eroding landscapes currently stalks them both. Aftershocks in Haiti are a way of life for a while, but rescue workers have shared another disaster that threatens their efforts, mudslides.

Haiti is one of the most environmentally impoverished countries on the planet. E&E reporter Nathanial Gronewold reports, shockingly, that only 2% of Haiti’s forests remain. 98% have been destroyed to meet energy and development needs. The result is a nation of naked hillsides where Matthew Marek of the American Red Cross says that “Haiti has experienced natural disaster-related fatalities regularly.”

And unlike California, Port Au Prince and other areas of Haiti lack virtually any infrastructure to aid in relief efforts. So the fear of mudslides and other disasters as people seek to pull one another from the disaster of an earthquake is frightening. Mark Ashton from the Yale School of Forestry reports that these slides can slow down relief efforts when they occur.

It is also a reminder of what an intricate world we live in. Who knew that as hillsides were deforested that it would eventually complicate some of the relief efforts from an earthquake unparalleled in the lifetime of our Haitian brothers and sisters. It is also a reminder that responsible care for the earth is about more than reusable bags and recycling. It is about preserving the very land, the earth itself, that was designed to protect and help all people.

Without roots and trees, whether destroyed by wildfires or by human hands, we cannot hope to rebuild a thing. Whether the threat of losing million dollar homes in the San Gabriel mountains, or the threat of losing more lives and rescue workers in Haiti, we need to care for the land so that the land can take care of us. It is a partnership that cannot be upset. The balance must be maintained for today, and to hold us safe for the future. In Haiti, as we scramble to save, to hope, to pray, to love, to help, let us do so hoping to partner in the rebuilding both the lives of the Haitian people and the land that sustains them,