The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocks Haiti. The world mobilizes billions of dollars in relief aid, but the systemic problems that contribute to the massive death toll remain. Katz uses the collapse of a school three years prior as a metaphor for many of the problems that plague the Caribbean nation. In November 2008, the Collége La Promesse Evangelique collapsed, killing at least 100 children. The school, located in one of many of Haiti's extremely poor neighborhoods, was constructed using inferior materials. According to Katz, most of the nearby residents whose children attended the school knew about the violations but said nothing. To the desperately poor, education is the sole path to upward mobility, and shutting the school down would have been counterproductive. The proprietor of the school, Fortin Augustin, turned himself in to authorities, but Haiti's president, René Préval offered no details about whether or not he would be prosecuted.

Haiti, Katz writes, is a nation in a perpetual state of catastrophe. Four months prior to the school collapse, "four hurricanes and tropical storms struck in as many weeks" (8), flooding coastal towns and killing 793 people. The United States, Canada, and France pledge aid, but a disproportionate amount of it goes to administration and overhead.