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Haiti quake: Red Cross aid worker diary – Monday

By Emily Knox
January 25, 2010 at 2:05 pm

So, our British Red Cross logistics team of four is now a joint British-Spanish team. Whilst Peter and Theo rough it in Haiti building latrines, our new teammates Antonio and Pedro Pablo have been getting stuck into the frenzy that is the airport and warehouse.

I have been mainly creating stock reports, bugging people for paperwork and working on the budget. There is, of course, also the constant flow of calls and messages to deal with and demands for information. I have been intrigued by how many ways people try and convey the urgency of their emails. Red flag, red exclamation mark, subject ‘Top Priority’ , ‘Urgent’, ‘Important’ and my favourite ‘Top Urgent’. 

I’m in daily contact now with Haiti. Rosemary from the American Red Cross, who is working with the Swiss Red Cross logistics ERU, emails and calls me on the Sat phone to find out the latest on what has arrived in Santo Domingo. This helps them relay to the relief teams what is available and they then put in a requisition for stock to be moved. 

In other news, I am getting a very faint farmer’s tan.

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Tags: emergency response, emergency response unit, ERU, Haiti, Haiti earthquake, haiti earthquake appeal, sanitation, video, water and sanitation

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Emergencies. 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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