Red Cross support pours into flood-hit Haiti

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.