Red Cross Blogs

Claire Durham

If we were living in Shakespearian times I would have thrown down a glove and dared you to pick up the gauntlet. However this is the twenty first century and I am a logistician so instead I’ll fling down my forklift keys and if you are up for the challenge. The disaster challenge.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the negative press about how slow aid has been getting into Haiti.

Whilst it’s frustrating for all involved to hear these things actually I think it’s a good thing for the examination and scrutinising.  Flagging up issues, seeing if things could have been done better and making them public. After all, it’s the public’s money that we are spending.  What would have been refreshing would be if some of those voices were also hollering solutions to the problems being reported. They were less forthcoming. Maybe because disaster response just isn’t that easy?

We took some calls in the office with people offering ideas.  Some mirrored what the teams on the ground were doing.  Others were well meaning but less practical.  Air dropping aid seems sensible, but when you consider that only the youngest, fittest and healthiest (and arguably the least needy) are going to be able to race and get there first you can start to see a flaw in the plan.

So my question to you, is what would you have done to run the relief operation in Haiti better?  How would you have got food and blankets to the elderly, the injured, the orphaned and the sick?  Remembering that the airport was only built to allow ten planes to land a day.  The port was damaged and couldn’t be used. The roads were blocked by debris. Petrol and electricity was scarce.  Oh and there was still a risk of pretty large aftershocks.

Got some ideas already?  Feeling confident enough to put them into practise?  Obviously I can’t send you to Haiti to test your plans. But what if I could offer you an opportunity to go to Bukistan, a little known country lying on a major fault line and the scene of at least two major earthquakes a year since 2004.  So would you be interested? Do you think you could work in the immediate aftermath of a major disaster? Could you face the issues and make life saving decisions?

You’ve seen the pictures on TV, you’ve heard the problems, and you may have even talked about it down the pub.  But what does it feel like to actually be there?  How would you provide shelter to thousands of people who have lost their homes?  What would you do about the security situation? Could you live in the most basic of conditions? Are you be someone passionate about saving lives and changing lives?

This is a fundraising event, not a training programme. If you want to work for us you need to apply for the jobs that we have available. But I can promise you that it is a weekend you will not forget.  It’s hard work, it’s exciting, it’s exhausting and it’s great fun.  I know, I was a participant on the very first disaster challenge, long before I got my job here. It literally changed my life.  Maybe like me, after you’ve completed the challenge you’ll feel so passionate that you’ll change your career.

So, the keys are still lying there, are you going to walk straight past them. Or do you choose to bend down and scoop them up? The door is open, come on inside and see what my world’s like. I really hope to see you there.

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Tags: charity jobs, disaster challenge, earthquake, emeregency aid, emergency response, fundraising, Haiti, Haiti earthquake, logistics
Posted in Emergencies

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The smell of the jet fuel, the roar of the engine, the sting of the icy rain. That was last Friday as I stood on the tarmac at East Midlands airport with one thing on my to-do list – send the Mass Sanitation Module (MSM) Emergency Response Unit (ERU) to Haiti following the earthquake.

After a disaster there is always the fear that disease will spread amongst the survivors, pushing up the already mounting death toll. One of the biggest concerns is that the presence of dead bodies will increase this. There is panic and a rush to inter the deceased into mass graves. This can lead to problems later down the line either emotionally where loved ones have not been properly identified which makes the grieving process harder or practically where a death cannot be proved. Without a death certificate sorting out the inheritance of land or money can be a legal nightmare. In Indonesia after the Tsunami the mass burials occurred and then later the bodies were exhumed to allow for the identification process to take place.

And sadly this fear is based on myth. The people in Haiti have died due to injuries not infection and so there is no disease to pass on. Instead common diarrhoeal illnesses caused by contaminated water sources and a lack of good hygiene practises are going to put the people most at risk. Particularly the very old and the very young.

That is why the MSM is such a brilliant kit and so very much needed. Reports are saying that ninety percent of buildings have been destroyed in towns close to the epicentre. That’s houses, schools, shops, and toilets. Were you concerned about the loss of toilets? They aren’t necessarily the first thing that comes to mind in the aftermath of a disaster but without them there is a real risk that sewage will get into the drinking water and make people very sick.

That is why the MSM kit contains a mini-digger and latrines so that temporary toilet blocks can be constructed, giving people a dignified place to spend a penny whilst also protecting the local water source from contamination. The rapid latrines are quick to put up and are also a simple design which can be copied and made in country. This will allow far more to be built than I was able to load on the flight last Friday.

Another way disease is spread is through pests such as flies and mosquitoes. The kit contains disinfectant and sprayers to kill these insects. Getting rid of rubbish which can attract rats will also be something that the MSM team will look at. Methods include burning, burying, recycling and composting and what ever worked best for Port au Prince will be put into action.

As well as the equipment that comes with the MSM, a large part of the success of the team comes through showing families simple and practical actions that can stop the spread of disease. When your way of life has quite literally crumbled around you, it is much harder to maintain your usual standard of cleanliness or you may have to adopt new ways. So knowing to cover buckets of water to that they can’t be used as a breeding ground for mosquitoes, or boiling water before drinking can save your life.

Through posters, focus group discussions or radio broadcasts the messages can get out to a wide number of people quickly. Debunking such myths as children’s poo is less harmful than adults – it’s actually far more dangerous because kids have less well developed immune systems and it’s literally crawling with nasties. Or demonstrating the best technique for hand washing.

It might sounds simple and perhaps even a little condescending but just consider for a moment that 6.6 million people in Britain do not wash their hands after going to the toilet and a massive 69% do not washing hands before eating. Under regular circumstances they may be fine but after a mega disaster those same people will be traumatised, possibly injured, maybe malnourished or dehydrated and they are much more vulnerable and likely to pick up an infection.

It was therefore very important to get the MSM kit loaded last week and on its way to Haiti.  I had calculated all the weights and volumes and had ordered a suitably sized plane but when you look at all the boxes sitting on the tarmac you get a real heart in the mouth moment and you think, it’s never all going to fit. I was feeling pretty confident when we’d loaded the two land cruisers then the digger and the plane was only half full but then it started to rapidly fill up and I felt a jolt of alarm.

After five hours of loading we still had fifteen boxes of latrines to go and the back doors on the Ilyushin 76 had only just managed to close. Not quitters, the loading team discovered a small pocket of available space at the front of the plane and they started hauling the final boxes through the passenger door. Like a torturous new years-esque countdown I silently mouthed five, four, three, two, suddenly the load master appeared at the door and shock his head, no more room. You’ve got to be kidding I thought, and it turns out he was, as he broke into a big beaming smile and gave me the thumbs up.

The icy rain that had our teeth chattering finally stopped just as the last latrine was hoisted up the ladder and inside. Happiness is the thunk of a fully laden aircraft door closing. I knew by the time I woke up the next day the aircraft would have arrived in Santo Domingo and the kit would be unloaded onto a truck to go across the border to Haiti. With soggy feet but a happy heart I scrawled a large tick on the to-do list and headed home.

Follow updates from Sharon Reader who is currently in Haiti with the MSM on the British Red Cross international delegate blog.

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Tags: disaster, disaster response, disease, earthquake, Emergencies, emergency response, emergency response unit, ERU, Haiti, hygiene promotion, international, latrines, logistics, MSM, red cross, sanitation
Posted in Emergencies

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Can you hear that scraping noise? That’s me dragging my soap box to centre stage. Please don’t be alarmed and please don’t stop reading now because in the next five minutes you could learn how not donating to the Red Cross could save someone’s life.

I spend a large amount of my time post-disaster speaking on the phone with people who tell me that they don’t just want to donate money but they want to do more. They have medical items, clothes or food to give instead. People sometimes get cross or upset when I turn down their well meant offer. And that’s the point; their offer is genuinely well intentioned. They just aren’t aware of the reasons why the Red Cross can’t take these goods. Unfortunately I don’t always have the time to fully explain why. Last Friday I spent more than half a day taking such calls for Haiti, even with a bevy of volunteers helping me. When really I should have been chartering an aircraft to deliver blankets and jerry cans to Port au Prince.

First let me debunk a couple of myths, starting with the principle that “anything is better than nothing”. Trust me, it’s
not. Relieving suffering should be guided solely by need and not what people have to donate. Humanitarian aid should also ‘do no harm’. Quite a lot of harm is done when unwanted and unneeded fresh food items rot in piles at the airports and seaports, stopping medicines and blankets getting through.

Secondly, we don’t own planes. We pay for commercial air freight like anyone else would. And it’s expensive. That’s why we don’t fly blankets and jerry cans out from the UK. We buy and store them in countries close to where disasters happen so that it’s faster and cheaper to get them to where they are needed. We hold stocks for several thousand families so that we are ready to go 24/7. As soon as we can, we start to buy the rest that’s need from the affected country or its neighbours.  In particular food, soap and where feasible, medicines. These items will be to local taste, will give a much need monetary boost to the economy and the transportation costs will be lower. The savings made can be used to buy more aid.

Unwanted donations create chaos, waste and confusion for an already stricken country. The risks are spiralling costs or actual threats to its people, environment and industry. For example local shop owners, who may have lost family members and their home then find their business crumbling as food or clothing aid is imported.

Storage space is scarce in every post-disaster setting. A huge influx of goods needs to be housed somewhere.  In Banda Aceh after the Tsunami, health centres had to sacrifice patient’s rooms to store inappropriate drugs. The irony is that the medicines sent in to help people instead reduced the number of sick people who could access treatment. Pharmaceuticals are very sensitive to light, heat and humidity. If they are not stored in proper conditions, at best they lose some of their effectiveness, at worst they become completely useless. You have no way of know where they have been and you can’t tell just by looking if these items are still going to work.

Medicines not recognised by local doctors could lead to fatal doses being prescribed. Patients face a bewildering and ever changing array of pills in different boxes and with different amounts to be taken. Often the packaging and instruction leaflet is in a foreign language.  The chance of accidently overdosing is very real. Also if the quality of the drugs or equipment is not acceptable for the UK then it is also not acceptable for Haiti.

Drugs that are not required, those that have expired or have no expiry date have to be destroyed. Incineration is preferred as this prevents the hazard of land filled medicines contaminating water supplies or drugs being collected and sold on the black market. In Eritrea after the war of independence, seven truckloads of expired aspirin took six months to burn. The real tragedy is the cost of this process. In the Venezuela floods in 2000, seventy percent of donated pharmaceuticals had to be destroyed. To be able to cover this cost, a support line to provide psychological support to the survivors had to be shut down.

Imagine you have to help 10,000 families put up aid tents. What would you do? I would probably train a handful of volunteers how to put up said tent and get them out training others. Now what would you do if every single one of those tents was different? Replace the word tent with the following: incubator, water pump, dialysis machine.  With these items you will also have maintenance and spare parts. We standardise items and put them in our catalogue for a reason. Efficiency and effectiveness are key to what we do.

I do understand that people want to help. The British Red Cross has capacity to help others due to the generosity of the British public and we are deeply grateful for their support.  But when we ask for money it is because, for us, the best way to help those people directly affected by the disaster. Your money will pay for life saving items, and the trucks and planes to get them there, and the ERU teams on the ground handing them out. If you do have any saleable items, like clothing or books then please donate them to the Red Cross shops and the money raised will also support our work.

I have one more favour to ask. Could you please get just another person you know to read this blog. The more people who can understand the down side of unsolicited goods, the less chance there is of this stuff cluttering up the aid effort. And the fewer phone calls I will have to take to explain individually why we can’t accept the offer. Then I can get on with the practical side of helping the Haitian people, which is, let’s face it, what all of us want to do. Right, I’ll step away from the soap box now, thanks for listening.

© IFRC

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Tags: disaster, disaster response, donations, earthquake, Emergencies, emergency response, Eritrea, ERU, Haiti, international, logistics, Pakistan, Port au Prince, red cross, Red Cross shops, unwanted aid, Venezuela, volunteer
Posted in Emergencies

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It is a true universally acknowledged fact that you don’t hear about natural disasters on a random Monday afternoon. Or maybe it’s just the calls on Boxing Day or at midnight stick more vividly in the mind! The text message for Haiti came at midnight on Tuesday. It simply read “ERU Info: Haiti: 7.3 EQ off coast. Tsunami alert.” You don’t know how bad things might be at that time but you plan for the worst.

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Tags: American Red Cross, British Red Cross, disaster management, disaster response, Dominican Republic, earthquake, Haiti, Japanese Red Cross, logistics ERU, natural disaster, Norwegian Red Cross, red cross, Spanish Red Cross
Posted in Emergencies

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‘It’s like déjà vu all over again’ I thought when I heard it was the anniversary (almost to the day) of the 1988 Bangladesh cyclone which at the time was the worst cyclone in almost 20 years. I am more familiar with cyclone Sidr, those of you who regularly read my blog will know that I was part the first logistics Emergency Response Unit to arrive in country when it struck a little over two years ago. During my time there I had heard about the 1970 cyclone (Bhola; 500,000 people lost their lives) and the 1991 cyclone (138,000 deaths) but the 1988 one had crept under my radar.
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Tags: Aila, Bangladesh, Bangladeshi Red Crescent, Bhola, cyclone, cyclone shelters, disaster, Emergencies, emergency response, emergency response unit, First aid, recovery, Sidr
Posted in Emergencies

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I was in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday assessing the life saving items we hold in our regional warehouse when I heard that an earthquake measuring 7.9 had struck the west coast of Indonesia. This brought the number of near-simultaneous disasters to rock the Asia Pacific region to four. The local Red Crosses started to respond immediately after the disasters to support the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless and injured and in desperate need of food shelter and first aid. The British Red Cross has launched a regional appeal and the money raised will support Red Cross National Societies responding on the ground.

On Friday morning I was woken by a text message requesting a logistics emergency response unit (ERU) to go to Padang in Indonesia to assist the relief effort following the earthquake.  Read the rest of this post »

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Tags: earthquake, Emergency Appeal, emergency response unit, Indonesia, logistics, natural disaster, Padang, PMI, relief, South Asia, volunteers
Posted in Emergencies

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Practice makes perfect as the saying goes and that is applicable when it comes to disaster response. So with that in mind, I’m writing this from the ‘comfort’ of my tent by torch light in a field in near Bristol. As one of the facilitators, I arrived last night in the lashing rain and the dark dressed in wellies and a waterproofs not relishing the thought of having to put up the tent that would be my home for the coming week. I can’t quite put into words the sheer happiness and elation I felt when I peered into the misty darkness and could just make out the faint outline of my tent. JC our warehouse manager had taken pity on us and had put up a tent for each of us! Read the rest of this post »

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Tags: Bristol, disaster response, emergency response unit, logistics, training
Posted in Emergencies

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Solferino is a peaceful, almost sleepy sort of town, with a couple of café bars and a fabulous gelataria that I did not frequent as often as I would have liked. However almost exactly 150 years ago the area was in the midst of a bloody battle and the fledgling Red Cross began to work. Read the rest of this post »

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Tags: 150th anniversary, Battle, celebrations, Danish Red Cross, disaster, emergency response unit, Italian Red Cross, Italy, logistics, Movement, Pakistan Earthquake, Solferino
Posted in Emergencies

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