Red Cross Blogs

Hiatus in Haiti

By Claire Durham
January 16, 2010 at 9:30 am

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.

It was clear from the pictures being shown on TV that the worst had happened. Information is always sketchy in the first hours and days, hampered by phone lines being down but details start to trickle through. Estimates on the number of people involved, their most urgent needs appeared allowing prioritisation plans to form.

The Red Cross has stocks of the vital life saving items such as blankets and jerry cans in a warehouse in Panama. It’s
relatively easy to pick up the phone and find out how quickly you can rent an aircraft to move these goods. It’s more
difficult to find out if the airport is undamaged and if planes can actually land. And refuel once there so they can leave
again!  It’s this kind of information, so vital to the relief operation, which understandably can be so unclear in the
beginning.  But that is all part of my job.

There have been so many requests for media interviews that we’ve all had to pitch in. In my case I did a live radio interview with BBC Radio Devon about why we need cash and not donated items. I have also spent a lot of time on the phone taking calls from people also keen to donate items. It is great that people are feeling so passionate that they want to help but the best way to do that is to donate the items to the Red Cross shops and give money to the appeal.

The text messages continued to ping in; Norwegian Red Cross Hospital, American Red Cross Shelter, Spanish Red Cross Water and Sanitation, Japanese Red Cross clinic all flying out.  Then at one minute past eleven yesterday morning we had the call to send our logistics Emergency Response Unit (ERU).

The flurry of activity ramped up a notch. Flights to Santo Domingo were booked; satellite phones and laptops were packed up.  A colleague emerged triumphant, brandishing the last remaining guidebook and map of Haiti in the whole of the London area! A large box of krispy kremes was devoured by the hungry workers mid meeting. In the afternoon the ERU team members started appearing in the office, suitcase in hand and ready for their briefing.

By the time you have read this, the team will be enjoying the in-flight catering somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. We aim to have the team deployed within 48 hours and this time we managed it in just under 24.It will be a month before we see them again but we’ll stay in touch during that time.  As for me, well my weekend will be very quiet, not least because the friend I was planning on partying with, is part of the ERU team.  I think it’s fair to say that the people of Haiti need her far more than I do.

© Matthew Marek/American Red Cross

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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

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