Staff

GHI’s  staff is comprised of experienced professionals with diverse backgrounds, including earthquake science, engineering, medicine, law, communications, finance and international development. 

Gefthé Dévilmé

Field Officer

Anse-à-Veau, Haiti

Gefthé Dévilmé, GHI Field Officer, has many years of experience working in the fields of law, education, safe water, and public health to strengthen rural populations at risk in Haiti. He is a lawyer, an active volunteer with Haiti’s Department of Civil Protection, and teaches at a public high school. He is native to and based in Haiti’s southern peninsula. After the August 2021 Nippes earthquake, he led local activities for Expanding Rapid Community-Sourced Damage Data Collection. He trained teams of community members who collected earthquake damage photos and building information using a Creole-English app developed by the Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) network. This included coordinating on-the-ground logistics and communication between community data collectors, remote engineer experts, and US Geological Survey (USGS) technical experts. Prior to this, Mr. Dévilmé coordinated the formation of a local committee of leaders in his region to undertake locally-tailored messaging that informs people about how to be safe during an earthquake, given specific risks in the local built environment. A component of this messaging was developed in partnership with government education agencies and targets local schoolchildren. Another component included public outreach to explain the risk by radio, sound trucks, churches, pamphlets, and committee members’ door-to-door conversations. He has supervised earthquake-resistant construction of a new primary school in Anse-a-Veau and trained local carpenters in disaster-resistant construction methods while rebuilding a home for an elder whose house was destroyed in Hurricane Matthew.