Earthquake Reconstruction Efforts
(International Foundation, February 5, 2010)

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on January 12, an NRECA team has been working as part of a multinational group to assess and repair the damage to the city's crippled power system.

To date, the NRECA team has assisted EdH, the Haitian state electric power company, in the following tasks:

Myk Manon (front-right) and Bud Stanley (top) work with EdH and CNE staff to repair a radiator leak on Transformer 1 at Ancien Delmas.

Bud Stanley, Myk Manon and Christian Ponce assist EdH crew with wiring a standby generator at the EdH office complex.

International response team members and EdH staff, including NRECA's Myk Manon (standing, left) and EdH Technical Director Fritz Joseph (standing, right) meet to discuss priorities for inspections, repairs, and circuit testing.

• NRECA was the first international support team on the ground in Port-au-Prince, arriving on January 16 and setting up a base in the EdH complex, even before most EdH employees returned to work. The NRECA team repaired the emergency generator to restore power and installed a satellite communications system to permit regular exchanges of information with head offices of the other partner teams as they arrived.


• NRECA team members Myk Manon and Bud Stanley inspected damaged substations and provided guidance, organization, and technical assistance to EdH’s capable team of engineers and technicians, supported by crews from the Dominican Republic, as they repair and reenergize the EdH transmission network.


• An EdH-NRECA team supervised the energization and test loading, on February 2, of the EdH 69kV network, the first time grid power was energized since the January 12 earthquake.


• NRECA is assisting EdH in the acquisition of a mobile substation, arranged by the U.S. Department of Energy and CDEEE, the Dominican national utility. The 25MVA mobile substation may be needed to restore service to Ancien Delmas, one of the largest distribution substations in the Port-au-Prince system.


• Working in partnership with the EdH Technical Department, the NRECA team organized crews from the Dominican Republic to inspect and evaluate approximately 250 km of 12.5 kV distribution lines, noting damage to poles, pole-top structures, conductor, distribution transformers, and other hardware. NRECA structured the inspection process and manages data processing. The team is developing a simple GIS to assure that the data collected can be easily used for repairs in the coming months. The inspection process will likely require another three to four weeks to complete. Several inspection teams have been shifted to support the EdH Emergency Services department as it undertakes priority line repairs.


• NRECA transferred its line truck from construction activities in the Dominican Republic to Port-au-Prince and is using it to support EdH repair crews.


• Former NRECA staff member Gilberto Ayala joined the Haiti Recovery Team on February 3, under an agreement between NRECA and his current employer, Luz y Fuerza las Terrenas, a long-time partner in the Dominican Republic. The president of Luz y Fuerza, Jose Oscar Orsini, has graciously offered to donate the value of Mr. Ayala’s time to work as an integral part of the NRECA team. Gilberto worked for a number of years under the guidance of Myk Manon in El Salvador and in the Dominican Republic.


• Bud Stanley of the NRECA team repaired damaged emergency generators and restored power to the State University Hospital, one of the largest in Port-au-Prince.


• NRECA civil engineer Jorge Ponce, a Bolivian currently working with the NRECA program in the Dominican Republic, carried out structural evaluations of buildings in the EdH office/warehouse complex and of the Carrefour I power plant to determine the extent of the damage.


• The NRECA team continues to coordinate on a daily basis with the U.S. Department of Energy, USAID, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, CDEEE, the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.N. Early Recovery Coordination Cluster. NRECA provides daily progress/status reports summarizing achievements and challenges to the coordination group members in an effort to ensure all parties have the latest information available to them.