Red Cross Blogs

Haiti quake: Red Cross aid worker diary – Monday

By Emily Knox
January 18, 2010 at 9:26 am

Damage to the air and sea ports is causing huge logistical challenges in getting urgent supplies into the country. While the airport has now re-opened it cannot cope with the high volume of planes arriving, and many flights are being re-routed to Santo Domingo, in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

The ERU team is based in Santo Domingo and is now co-ordinating delivery of relief goods arriving from the Red Cross warehouse in Panama. Emily reports back:

Well, it’s the end of my first and very long day in Santo Domingo. Having arrived late last night, passing newly arrived Chinese sniffer rescue dogs at the airport, I was worried I might not wake up early enough today. However, the advantage of the time difference meant I was wide awake at 6am and ready to get on with things.

I spent most of the day at the office of the Dominican Republic Red Cross who have been dealing with the logistics so far. Because of the damage to the port at Port-Au-Prince a lot of cargo is being rerouted to Santo Domingo, then forwarded on by road over the border. The Dominican Republic Red Cross have been doing an incredible job dealing with all the shipments coming in, especially when some planes land with no prior warning or paperwork.

In addition, they have volunteers in Haiti helping to distribute relief items and as well as organising the giving of blood. This afternoon as I passed the entrance to the Dominican Republic Red Cross office I saw large groups of Red Cross volunteers loading water destined for Haiti.

Aside from sorting out our team finances today, I met various Red Cross colleagues from the National Society, the Spanish Red Cross and even the Benelux Red Cross (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg), and did my part to make sense of the ‘pipeline’ so that we know what planes and goods are coming in. The pipeline is basically a schedule giving all the details of the planes, arrival times, the cargo they are carrying, how much it weighs – everything we need to know to work out how to organise getting it trucked in to Haiti and distributed to those who so desperately need it.

I also tried to speak to my Swiss Red Cross logistics ERU counterpart who is in Haiti but was unable to get through… Meanwhile, my colleague David spent his day at the airport ensuring that the final part of the four shipments of the Norwegian Red Cross field hospital (which fit into two 40ft containers!) was safely seen through customs and put on the road to Jimani for onward travel Prince Au Port.

Looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings…

If you would like to make a donation to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal please visit the DEC website or call 0370 60 60 900

Image 1 © Matt Percival/BRC

Image 2 © Emily Knox/BRC

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Comments (6) »

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Tags: Dominican Republic, emergency aid, emergency response, emergency response unit, ERU, Haiti, Haiti earthquake, logistics, Port au Prince

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 9:26 am 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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