Reidville -
Sgt. David Layden said before he went to Haiti to help the country rebuild itself after a magnitude-7 earthquake devastated the area in early January, he couldn't picture the real devastation, what the people were going through and what sort of help was needed.
Now, he said he has seen first-hand how the international aid is at work in the country and said being part of the healing process was an extremely rewarding experience.
Layden is an electrical distribution tech from an engineering support unit in Moncton,
N.B. and has served for 13 years in the Canadian Forces. During a break from the military, Layden also worked as a crash rescue firefighter and electrician for the Deer Lake Regional Airport before returning to the military in 2007. Layden touched down in Haiti on Feb. 2, spending more than a month throughout the country helping the local residents rebuild orphanages. He travelled to the three main locations where Canadian aid workers were stationed; Port-au-Prince, Leogane and Jacmel, and returned to Moncton on Mar. 11.
"I worked with the construction engineers and we built camps for the orphanages there.
I'm an electrician by trade. What we did is we helped design buildings with the local devastation down there and help them rebuild," said Layden.
He said his role as a construction engineer transformed into something more personal in Haiti, teaching the local people learn how to rebuild structures on their own once international workers were no longer around. Layden supervised the employment of locals while they constructed buildings that his team designed for the local orphanages.
The Civilian Military Co-operation teams contracted out locals to work with Disaster Assistance Response Team members to build the needed shelters and in the process they will learn construction techniques.
"They had a cash-for-work program where 400-500 locals were hired to try and first of all pay them to work, put money back into the economy … For one, they get experience on how to build these camps. We designed them in such a way that it's very rudimentary. Someone with no carpentry skills, if they watch us do it for a little while they can sort of clue in and get an idea," said Layden.
"Basically we were trying to build them quick shelters to get them off the ground and underneath (a roof) incase it rains they'll be try and out of the wind out of the elements.
Layden said he worked with 12 local people, leaving all extra material and hand tools with them so they could continue building and spread what they learned.
