University of Pittsburgh Disaster Management Expert Louise Comfort Is Available to Discuss Recovery in Haiti Following Tuesday's Earthquake

PITTSBURGH-Louise Comfort, professor of public and urban affairs in the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and director of the school's Center for Disaster Management, is available to discuss issues relating to Haiti's recovery following Tuesday's devastating earthquake.

"The coordination of international assistance will be critical in this disaster, since Haiti has endured very difficult political and economic conditions for decades," says Comfort. "There is very little capacity at the governmental level to deal with such an extreme event, and there is little awareness or enforcement of building codes, as demonstrated by the substantial destruction of buildings.

"Haiti urgently needs international assistance to cope with this event, and although there is the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Response Agency, little progress has been made in Haitian disaster management. Haiti has been in a continuing chaotic situation where it has been difficult to introduce any kind of management, let alone that directed specifically for extreme events like an earthquake," says Comfort.

Comfort has conducted studies of emergency responses to most major earthquakes over the past two decades.

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