Rogenet
Gede lost his home to Tropical Storm Jeanne. Luckily he did
not lose his family.
“My wife, three children and I now live in the family
store” says Rogenet with his grinning offspring children
curled around. “It will take me years to regain what I
lost.”
The water level has gone down in Gonaïves. But in many
places people still have to trudge through dirty pools to get
around.
Some of the roads are slowly being cleared by heavy machinery.
Narrow paths are emerging through previously impassable streets.
No sooner are these paths cleared than they are thick with people
and traffic trying to get around town as best they can.
If the floodwaters have receded in Gonaïves, just outside
the town a giant lake spotted with cacti remains, as do the
vehicles that ventured too far from a road obscured by a metre
of water. In one section a school bus lies stuck at a 45 degree
angle in the water. Its occupants now have to wade and walk
the rest of the way carrying their belongings.
Further ahead a similar fate has befallen a UN truck, while
nearby a private truck has stalled. The result is an hour long
traffic jam in the middle of a lake. Every day the road gets
a little worse. All the while, the risk of more rain raising
the water level remains.
Back in town life remains difficult as people try to get what
assistance they can. Food and safe water are still lacking.
In the midst of so much water people remain thirsty.
For those like Rogenet, who have lost so much so quickly, help
is on the way. Last Sunday, as part of the International Federation’s
operation, a French Red Cross Emergency Response Unit (ERU)
specialised in providing clean water and sanitation arrived
in Gonaïves. Near the entrance to the town a dozen Haitian
Red Cross volunteers are setting up five large water tanks.
“Once these tanks are in place we will draw contaminated
water from a number of wells and from a nearby river and fill
the reservoirs. We will be able to clean enough water to serve
approximately 40,000 people per day with about 15 litres per
person,” explains Benoit Porte, French Red Cross water
and sanitation delegate.
The French ERU is one of two water and sanitation teams deployed
in Haiti during the current crisis. The other ERU, from the
Spanish Red Cross, consists of five mobile water purification
plants, each of which can provide 150,000 litres of high quality
water per day.
In the meantime, the Red Cross has already begun to distribute
water. “We have already set up six water distribution
points around town. For the moment, Care is providing us with
the water which they are trucking to our distribution points
where we fill large rubber bladders in preparation to distribute.
Haitian Red Cross volunteers then distribute the water,”
explains water and sanitation delegate, Renzo Zigliotti.
“Hundreds of people show up and it goes very quickly.
Yesterday we distributed 15,000 litres, tomorrow we hope to
give out 30,000 and by early next week we should be able to
distribute between 90,000 to 180,000 litres a day,” he
adds.
Already about 130 tonnes of relief materials have arrived in
Port-au-Prince from the International Federation, as well as
from the Canadian, Spanish, French, Swiss, Belgian and Colombian
Red Cross Societies. A further consignment of about 2,000 food
parcels is on its way from the International Federation.
On Tuesday, the Federation announced an increase in its appeal
for Haiti. It is now seeking 11.6 million Swiss francs, with
which it will support the response of the Haiti Red Cross in
assisting 50,000 people for six months.
The Federation is coordinating and preparing the ground for
a large relief effort. Part of its team has just completed a
four-day assessment of the north western region of Haiti, to
determine the needs of the population outside Gonaïves.
“We discovered that there are between 15,000–18,000
people outside Gonaïves who have been just as affected
as people in Gonaïves, but who have not received any attention,”
says the leader of the Federation’s Field Assessment and
Coordination Team, Roger Bracke.
“Our approach to this relief effort will be equitable,
providing Red Cross assistance to the most vulnerable in both
Gonaïves and the surrounding areas,” he adds.
As always in flood situation, there are serious health concerns
in Gonaïves, and the Federation has already brought in
elements of a hospital ERU, supported by the Canadian and Norwegian
Red Cross. The Spanish Red Cross will be providing purified
water to the hospital using a mobile water purification plant.
The hospital ERU, worth over US$ 2 million, will serve to rehabilitate
the only existing referral hospital in Gonaïves - l’Hôpital
la Providence, which has been completely flooded. In the meantime,
a fully equipped 100-bed field hospital will be set up and run
by existing local staff, supported by 17 expatriate staff from
Canada and Norway.
It will have the same services as any other referral hospital,
including an operating theatre, radiology, obstetrics, internal
medicine, gynaecology and paediatrics.
“The aim is to have the hospital operational by the end
of this week. As soon as the existing l’Hôpital
La Providence has been rehabilitated all equipment from the
field hospital will be donated and transferred there,”
says Dr Paul Odberg, leader of the hospital ERU team.
In Gonaïves, the French Red Cross has identified over 2,000
families in need living in 60 shelters across the town. Despite
the logistical challenges, it has, with the help of Haitian
Red Cross volunteers, been delivering non-food items, such as
hygiene kits, kitchen equipment, jerry cans, stoves and blankets.
For those who have are concerned about missing loved ones, the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in close collaboration
with the Haitian Red Cross, has started work to help people
re-establish contact with families both within Haiti and abroad.
With more than 1,500 people having died and around 1,000 still
unaccounted for, there are many trying to obtain relevant information
on the whereabouts of their loved ones. Haitian Red Cross volunteers
have been taking details of those people wishing to have their
names read out on local radio stations all over the country
to inform family members that they are alive and well.
At the same time, volunteers also began taking tracing requests
from people who have had no news of relatives since the disaster.
Those lists are also being read out on local radio stations
in Gonaïves.
The ICRC has also set up a website with the objective of allowing
people seeking information about their relatives, or persons
living in Haïti who wish to inform that they are well,
to register on the site.
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Near
Gonaïves, a school bus lies stranded in the floodwater
(p12078)
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Haitian
Red Cross volunteers unload humanitarian aid arriving
at Port-au-Prince airport (p12076)
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Red
Cross volunteers help members of the French Emergency
Response Unit to erect a water reservoir in Gonaïves
(p12081)
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Some
200,000 people have been affected by flooding in and around
Gonaïves (p12082)
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