Red Cross Blogs

Red Cross volunteer assists evacuees from Libya

By Sarah Oughton
March 4, 2011 at 9:30 am

Violent clashes in Libya have left hundreds of people dead and thousands injured. Tens of thousands of people are fleeing the country.

As the British foreign office sent a ship to Libya to evacuate British citizens affected by the crisis, Angela Lamport, Red Cross trustee and volunteer, joined the ship to provide practical and emotional support to the evacuees.

Angela was deployed as part of an agreement the Red Cross has with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) who can call upon our psycho-social support team when British citizens are affected by disasters overseas.

When did you find out you would be deployed to Libya?
At 10 pm on 21 February I got a call from the Red Cross emergency planning and response team asking me to be at Heathrow airport by 10 am the next morning. I was told to take a flight to Crete where I would board the HMS Cumberland heading to Libya to evacuate people fleeing the current crisis.

How did you feel when you were asked to go to Libya?
With everything we are seeing and hearing in the news and the uncertainty of it all it was a little daunting, but I guess also exciting.

What happened when you arrived at Benghazi?
There had been a lot of discussion about how to get the evacuees on board ship if we were not able to get right into the port. In the end we did go in and docked alongside the quay. But it was a very impressive operation with everyone – the crew and FCO – all working together to get the evacuees on board and to safety.

How many people were waiting to be evacuated?
By the time we arrived at Benghazi on 24 February it was already in the hands of the opposition. It was pretty quiet when we first docked and slightly eerie. Then the evacuees started arriving, we had a list of 100 names but really didn’t know if just these people would turn up or if we’d be inundated. The ship would have squeezed in up to 1,000 people if necessary but in the end 207 people were evacuated that day.

What was your role as part of the FCO rapid deployment team?
Well the FCO staff set up their desks on the dock, with assistance from the Royal Navy, and started to process people checking passports and documents as they arrived. When they boarded the ship the crew gave them a safety briefing and showed people to the mess rooms where they would be accommodated. I would then greet people and see how they were doing. Most people were exhausted but coping well. But for some the trauma was pretty obvious. When I introduced myself to one woman and explained I was from the Red Cross she just burst into tears. I spent quite a lot of time with her just being there and trying to offer some comfort. And there were quite a few times when crew members would come and get me and tell me there was someone struggling and could I go and speak to them. The FCO team and ship’s crew were very appreciative of our help as it allowed them to get on with what they had to do.

How were the evacuees on the ship coping?
Although the situation was tense the crew was absolutely amazing at looking after everyone. They were so well prepared and each room of evacuees had several crew members looking after them and making sure they had what they needed with blankets, food and water. You could tell all the evacuees were utterly exhausted and a few people were pretty traumatised. There was one family in a particularly bad way, you could see their nerves were really stretched. Some were very tearful and traumatised at having had to leave family behind.

How did you help people who were traumatised by their experience in Libya?
Well I think it was very much a team effort with the ship’s crew, the FCO and Red Cross all working together to do as much as we could to get the evacuees away to safety as quickly and comfortably as possible. Even once we had everyone on board we still had a 34-hour journey through very rough seas as we headed to Malta and many people were seasick. I spent my time with those who were struggling, just giving a helping hand where I could, a bit of TLC and moral support – there’s nothing high tech about it but hopefully it helped. I certainly feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to work with such an amazing group of people. Despite the threatening environment and very rough seas, I felt I we were all in safe hands with the captain and his crew and my admiration for them knows no bounds.

Visit the British Red Cross website to find out about our emergency appeal to help people affected by the unrest in Libya and the wider region.

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Tags: conflict, Crisis, evacuees, Libya, psycho-social support

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 9:30 am and is filed under Emergencies, International. 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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