Red Cross Blogs

Haiti podcast: sending relief to survivors

By Katrina Crew
January 21, 2010 at 3:00 pm

When people lose everything they own in a disaster, certain items can mean the difference between life and death.

The British Red Cross has warehouses of emergency items we can send anywhere in the world after a disaster. Listen to an interview with John Cunningham, who manages our warehouse in England. He explains what we are sending out to help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.

Transcript:

Victoria Wood-Matthews: When people lose everything they own in a disaster, certain items can mean the difference between life and death. The British Red Cross has warehouses of emergency items we can send anywhere in the world after a disaster. John Cunningham manages our warehouse in England, and has himself been part of emergency teams in many disasters zones. He explains what is being sent out to Haiti this week.

John Cunningham: At the moment we are sending out two vehicles which are going to Santa Domingo, that’s to help the logistics team get around in the field and also we are deploying the mass sanitation module, which is the personal field kits which allows the delegates to be self-sufficient for up to a month in the field and also the equipment they are going to need, things like the JCB digger to dig trenches for the latrines because we ‘re sending out latrines as it’s a really big problem with sanitation and also basic health module which is basic health care and associated vehicles.  Plus the hygiene promotion kits and that all comes in to the basic health care.

Victoria: The mass sanitation four-person team who will be setting up the latrines and sharing good hygiene practise will need to be self-sufficient whilst in Haiti and not drain any of the local recourses – so this where the personal field kits come in, John explains.

John: The personal field kit is basically a kit that allows delegates to be self-sufficient and it covers things like tents, personal tents, sleeping bags, food, the whole of the kitchen cooking facilities, computers, there’s accessories that goes with it so it’s richly everything single thing that you would need to actually be self-sufficient for up to a month when you’re in the field.

Victoria: Why is it important to be self-sufficient?

John: Well you know, bearing in mind, I’m sure you’ve seen the images coming out of Haiti at the moment. The last thing you want to be doing is sending teams into the country and they’re having actually try to procure some of the equipment they’re going to need. So from our experience of past deployments we’ve learnt that we have to send our delegates in with every single item that they are going to require to be self-sufficient for up to a month.

Victoria: Can you explain how all this equipment is getting to Haiti and how the relief teams will get into Haiti to the people who need it most?

John: Well we’re doing a two-pronged attack at the moment if I can put it that way, we’ve got the logistics team sitting in Santa Domingo at the moment so a lot of the equipment is flying into Santa Domingo which is in the Dominican Republic not too far from the Haitian border and from there they’re going to be able to truck it into Haiti. And the second part of it is the mass sanitation equipment which will actually be flying into Port au Prince so that we have it actually on the ground and hopefully as soon as it’s cleared it can be put to work straight away.

Victoria:  The British Red Cross’ sanitation team is just one of many teams of experts that the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has sent from around the world. Right now, there are sixteen other teams working on the relief effort – from co-ordinating distributions of life-saving items like shelter and water, to running a field hospital, to providing health care to thousands of people. Never before has the Red Cross sent so many teams to one country after a disaster.

Donate now to the British Red Cross or DEC Haiti appeal HERE.

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Tags: earthquake, ERU podcasts, Haiti, Haiti earthquake, haiti earthquake appeal, podcast mp3, sanitation

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Emergencies, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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