Most Americans have now seen images of the devastation in Haiti after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the island nation on Tuesday. Communication issues are still plaguing the country, as friends and relatives of those living in Haiti are trying to reach their loved ones to determine if they are OK.
Infrastructure in Haiti, already lacking in many respects, is even more damaged by the earthquake. CBS News reported that food and water is the next challenge for aid organizations.
In one of their reports from the field, CBS News reported: “On a good day, there’s not enough food and clean drinking water to go around in Haiti—and today is not a good day. The United Nations confirms that clean water is lacking.”
This catastrophe, just like others we have witnessed in the last decade around the world, reveals the need for infrastructure that supports clean drinking water and also infrastructure that is able to accommodate interruptions in their normal activities.
Supplies of clean drinking water are necessary in preparation for large-scale disasters like the one in Haiti. That means either storage of bottled water or some reserves of drinking water.
In the U.S., we rarely think about these things because clean drinking water is rarely an issue for us—and we also don’t often suffer the devastation from natural disasters that other countries suffer.
Yet, this most recent disaster should cause us to be even more diligent is keeping our infrastructure modernized and our supply of clean drinking water full.