As a reporter for NPR, David Schaper has done his fair share of crisis coverage. He was in Mississippi during Katrina, covered Midwest floods, and reported from towns leveled by tornados. But nothing prepared him for the scenes he witnessed during two weeks in Haiti. I spoke to Schaper earlier this week about his experiences reporting on the earthquake recovery efforts and what lessons can be gleaned for public media crisis planning.
Based out of NPR’s Chicago bureau, Schaper was part of a second wave of reporters, arriving in Haiti two weeks after the earthquake struck to relieve staff that had been in place since the first days. He had been following the news from Haiti, but had not expected to cover the story. With just a few days to get ready for the assignment, Schaper did his best to prepare himself — emotionally and professionally — for the conditions in and around the Haitian capital. “I knew I would be faced with immense human suffering, but you have to be able to separate what’s sad and what’s really a story for the news.”
Schaper hit the ground running and was filing news spots from Haiti the day of his arrival. The challenge of getting his work done in a disaster zone was made easier by the NPR production and operations staff. “The reporters and producers who were there before me and ops staff back in Washington did a fantastic job in dealing with the complex logistics that made the NPR coverage possible.” A makeshift production office had been set up in hotel that had suffered minor quake damage. Schaper described it as “the best you could expect under the difficult circumstances.” The NPR team had shelter, power (with intermittent interruptions), and fairly reliable internet connectivity via satellite phones.
Haiti is a poor nation to begin with and Schaper pointed to the difficulty of discerning which of the conditions he witnessed were a direct result of the earthquake and which ones were merely the local standard. Schaper informed me that Port-au-Prince is one of the largest cities in the world without a sewer system, and sanitation issues that arose after the quake have to be traced further back than January 12th.
Schaper says his time in Haiti reinforced his belief that public broadcasters can be a lifeline for local communities during crisis situations and he urges local stations to review their emergency response plans. “What public radio does best — provide depth and context to a story — becomes even more important during a crisis.” Schaper urges reporters to remember that emergencies often mean dealing with the unexpected and less-than-ideal conditions. “Who are your emergency contacts in local and state governments? What are your contingency plans if the power goes out or the transmitter goes down? That kind of preparation creates opportunities to make a difference during a crisis.”
You can listen to David Schaper’s reports from Haiti on the NPR website.
