This is a pictorial report of a very swift and well coordinated humanitarian action between Red Cross Aruba, the Dutch Marines, the Government of Aruba, the hospital of Aruba, members of the business community and the ports authority of Aruba.
The Dutch Marine ship “Hr. Ms. Pelikaan” was dispatched to Haiti on a humanitarian aid mission. After departing from Curacao, the ship entered Aruba’s harbor to collect equipment and marines (77 in total), to then head for Haiti.
Seeing that there was still some space available on board for transportation, the Dutch Marines contacted the Red Cross of Aruba and offered them the possibility to transport relief material to Haiti. However, this offer entailed one very particular challenge. Red Cross Aruba received the offer early Friday evening (January 15, 2010) with the notification that the ship would be departing the next morning (Saturday, January 16) at 5 a.m. (!). A little bit of a mission impossible since government offices and businesses were already closed.
The Red Cross sent out signals to Ministers, the hospital, the business community and the port authority for their support. Several business managed to find their employees at night and convinced them to help with this effort. The businessmen had an extra challenge, they would have to transport the goods to the harbor themselves as well (talking about asking too much sometimes…. But miracles do happen !!). More than 30 pallets of water, juices, packaged foods, flashlights and batteries, medical equipment and very valuable medication was delivered to the harbor on time and loaded aboard the Marine ship, and all of that in a couple of hours, when everything was already closed!!
Here follows a selection of pictures to give an impression of this swift ‘together we can’ action. It is needless to say that not everyone who helped is in the pictures, nor known to the Red Cross: our gratitude goes out to these unknown volunteers!
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