Haiti, one year and one day later.Wanted: Honest NGO.

As we passed the sad anniversary of "One Year after Haiti", it is interesting to go through the stream of commemorative articles coming out...

It looks like every single humanitarian entity eagerly reported on their activities in the past year.

I am looking for one article where an NGO or humanitarian agency does an honest self-evaluation, highlighting not only what went well, but also why the relief effort sucked and what THEY could do better.

Give me one article. One honest NGO. It will foster my hope that honesty in the humanitarian world has not completely disappeared.


Picture courtesy Bahamas Local

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Haiti aidworkers... This Is Your Life

Many people have asked what life is like for aidworkers in Haiti, knowing many of the offices were destroyed, and people lost their houses or apartments.

Here is a snapshot:

This is your office complex- LogBase:




This is your neighbourhood- Camp Charly:




Your wash room at Camp Charly:




And this is your home- about 8x8 feet:




Pictures via Shot from the Hip

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Haiti, where Mañana is not an option...

"Mañana, por favor!", I answer when housekeeping knocks on my door. Mañana, please, I am working...

I sit, computer on my lap, on my bed reading through a backlog of emails, catching up on work done, being done, and work to do.

I just got back from two days in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It has been almost two months since I landed in Santo Domingo to coordinate the support functions for the Haiti crisis, out of the Dominican Republic. My days are full. My attention is switching from a meeting with one of the ministers, staff recruitment, debugging a cash advance problem, a meeting on limiting the overtime the drivers can do, a shipment which seems to be lost but really is not, stamping the numbering on the food coupons, staffing contracts and a security incident.

It is not the amount of work that tires me, it is the intensity in which issues come, and need to be dealt with. Not that I don't like it, but in the evening, I pass out on my bed...

After two days in Haiti, I wonder how my colleagues can deal with their work, which is a ten fold more complex than mine. They don't have a comfortable hotel room, five floors up and 1 minute away from the office. They either live in Camp Charly, the tent camp for the humanitarians, or have to shuttle to the boat anchored off shore, to spend the night. Given, the boat is more comfortable, but it takes anything between one to two hours to get there. Some of the staff pitched their tent in the back of the container park, in "Log Base", right next to the airport, where most UN agencies set up tents, tarps and office containers, making it the "humanitarian nerve center" of the operation.

The humanitarian part of Log Base is nothing but one narrow road, lined with parked vehicles, crowded with people moving around between the offices, and filled on either side with "offices".

The fortunate have a 20 foot office container, some with airconditioning, with tarps over them to avoid water sipping through the joints. The less fortunate have massive tents to work in. Meetings are held in open spaces covered with tarps, or half open shelters. Lack of working space is common with most containers cramped with four people, hardly fitting the make shift desks, filled with files and folders hardly leaving space to fit their legs inbetween.

The noise is constant, mostly from planes and helicopters taking off or landing on the airstrip a few hundred feet away. During the meetings, when the screaming noise of yet another Ilutsin taking off builds up, people just stop their sentence for thirty seconds, and then continue as if nothing happened. Like pushing the 'pause' button on a video.

Most of the containers are now properly wired up onto the generators, and have network connections to the servers and satellite links. Nothing much we can do these days anymore without connectivity, be it for emails, telephone calls, or registering all procurement or logistics transactions onto the central servers in HQ.

Luckily, during my two days, it was neither hot, nor raining, and many staff commented "this weather is as good as it gets". I can imagine the dust, humidity or mud on other days.

There is a constant flow of visitors. Army personnel, staff from the other agencies and NGOs, civilians, people from the government and local communities, people coming back from assessment missions or distribution points. It makes it hard to keep concentrated to the task at hand, as people get interrupted every other minute.

And although the spotlight of the world's cameras is no longer focused on Haiti, the humanitarian operation is still to peak. While during the first six weeks, the utmost urgent needs were being met with loads of cargo being flown in, the steady massive flow of the aid cargo coming in per ship has started. While one plane can bring in up to 100,000 kgs of aid supplies, a ship can bring in 400,000,000 kgs in one go. So the logistics and distribution challenges are only starting now.

On top of it all, the rainy season has begun, making the need of the bringing in supplies even more urgent. And we have the hurricane season just around the corner.

So, sitting back in my hotel room on this Sunday, I can not have but admiration for the staff working in Haiti. Many of them were present during the earthquake. They have lost their homes, suffered from loosing family or friends, scarred by seeing the human misery day by day.

I wish anyone criticizing the humanitarian agencies on the ground in Haiti, could spend a week there, working with them and feel what it is to be faced with the daunting tasks ahead, where "Mañana" might not be an option.


Pictures from my visit to Haiti, and random snapshot from day to day life here, can be found on Shot from the Hip.

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Aid, logistics, helicopters and Haiti

Last week, we flew with a team from the government to Jimani, Barahona and Cabo Rojo to check out the condition at the main border crossing between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and two airstrips - one of which we already use as a contingency base. In view of the amount of aid (food, shelter, sanitation equipment, medicins,...) which is moved into Haiti, the logistics aspect, one of the areas we are responsible for, is critical. While things are very busy - to say the least - at this moment, in my view, the peak of the movement of goods still has to come, at the time we are shifting from emergency response to basic reconstruction.

In many aspects, for the Haiti operation, the logistics of the aid operation will determine the success of the relief efforts.

For last Sunday's assessment mission, we used one of the MI-171 helicopters we have deployed in the Haiti operations. We have four helicopters, two cargo planes and two passengers planes which ferry mostly people, but also urgent or fragile cargo between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

On the way back from the mission, the pilot followed the Southern coast of the Dominican Republic, from the Haiti border up to halfway to Santo Domingo. The views were astonishing, and in sharp contrast with the devastation in Haiti.

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Haiti emergency: Another day in the fast lane

I woke at 3 am today.
An ideal quiet time to connect to the wireless network here in the hotel in Santo Domingo, to catch up with my backlog of Email, and to catch the first Emails coming in from our HQ in Rome.
In the Emails, there is a series of exchanges on call-forwards of staff on standby for deployment. Unblocked the deployment of two staff due to arrive asap to help us set up the communications here in the office, and updated the list of another four staff the buro is sending in. Wrote some quick terms of reference for them and just worked my way through some outstanding issues.

8 am: Quick shower and down to the office which is installed in two conference rooms downstairs in the hotel. The usual suspects are already present: the people from aviation are already up and running. The ICT guys start their usual shift at 7:30. The finance and HR people are already at their desks.
Breakfast with some of the staff and we are ready for another day.

8:30: the room is full and buzzing. We are squeezed with about 40 people in one small conference room. Staff come in and out, talking on their mobiles, working on their laptops. All tables we work on are make shift conference room tables filled with files, wires, computers, and stuff. There is laughter and a buzz of activity all around.

9:30: A quick brief with Brenda who just arrived and who will assist our project manager in finding a permanent location for our office.

10:00: Time for a short meeting with our security officer, trying to make some sense of the new security arrangements at the border with Haiti.
We agree it is time to beef up the security arrangements for our border operations.

10:30: Georges, our procurement officer, who normally works in Afghanistan, rings the alarm bell that the food shipment for our base camp in Port-au-Prince is not ready for the afternoon flight.

11:00 meeting with the heads of finance, supplies and logistics of our supplier for the base camp food for Haiti. Agreed on the line of credit and the way we will work to call forward the food next week. We stress the importance of the shipment we had scheduled for today, as it has to be on the plane taking off at 14:00. We have now two and a half hours left. The supplier leaves with Cecelia, our assistant procurement officer (normally based in Ecuador), to the wholesale food shop, to buy one and a half ton of food for our staff in Haiti, in one hour.
Georges winks at me "we will make it, but it will be 'just in time'"

11:45 Meeting on the ICT requirements for the pending move to the new temporary location of our office, with Dane, who coordinates the ICT deployment in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Another wink: "All will be ok!"

12:00 Catching up with my emails again. More debugging. Some releases in our ERP system. Saying hi to more new staff who arrived last night.

13:00 Anisa, who normally works in Dubai, is our office manager (or 'mama' as we call her) and the admin crew, have arranged someone to bring in food every day. A quick bite, sitting outside the office. I walk around for a bit of fresh air. We have a dozen of our staff sitting around in the parking lot, eating their lunch.

13:30 Agreed how we will pay travel advances for our staff passing through Santo Domingo, inbound to Haiti. Gwyn, our travel guru from Rome works overtime. Ximena and Beverley, our HR team, come to tell me, proud as a peacock, we just processed our local payroll. Hurray...! A first!

14:00 Mario, who normally works in Indonesia, Tony (from HQ) and Alex (from Panama) form our finance crew. They have me sign off on our monthly bank reconciliation. Once again a first, as before the earthquake, the office here did not have a bank account, had no access to the ERP system... We are processing all transactions online now, set up in less than one week. Another first.... HURRAY! The balance shows our office processed about US$700,000 in payments, in the past three weeks.

14:30: George tells me the food for the basecamp made it in time for today's flight. Cecilia bought 1.5 tons of food in less than two hours. She reports even the managers of the wholesale store ran around the huge warehouse with shopping carts for her. Good going guys!

15:30 Time for a nap. Unicef calls twice. A VIP is flying using one of our planes in two days. Final arrangements on the schedules.

16:25: a quick shower. Walking out of my room, I cross Henrik, my head of operations. There is a problem in Fond Parisien, just across the border.

16:30 I do my daily briefing with the newly arrived staff. Something I do religiously so newcomers know what we do, how we organise ourselves, and understand what a pain the boss is over here (me!). But I get sidetracked for a meeting with the hotel manager who wants to speak with us.
We desperately need to firm up the agreement we have with them. Jane, our "Head of Support Services With A Friendly Smile" from Panama, Michael (from our Dubai office) and Luigi stress: Yes, we want 70 rooms blocked, with a block allocation of 100 rooms, and priority booking for 150 rooms. Yes, we want to have the locks replaced on the doors of our new offices, and floodlights on the back of the office is a must, thankyouverymuch.

17:45: for the first time, I miss the 17:00 all staff meeting. We needed to firm up the agreement with the hotel, otherwise we would never be able to cater for the 50 local staff we are recruiting in the next two weeks. So instead of walking through our two office-slash-conference rooms shouting "5 o'clock - meeting!!!", I now shout "Quarter to Six, meeting!" which causes a collective "Booh, you are late" tease from the staff. We use these daily briefs to streamline any issues that need to be discussed, announcements to be made, and short briefs. It is also the ideal moment to introduce all new staff who arrived in the past 24 hours.

18:05 We are ending the brief, and Henrik gives me a sign. I can see there in his eyes there is trouble. "The situation we discussed this morning might run out of hand, we need to act now" is his short message. I call the head of one of our implementing partners in Port-au-Prince via his satellite telephone and we discuss briefly to the head of IOM at the border. It is clear, we need to move fast.

18:30 We call the head of UNICEF and cochair of the nutrition cluster in the Dominican Republic. She confirms the dire need of food in two small camps. I call Carlos in Haiti to clear the upcoming distribution. He gives us the go-ahead.

18:45 Jose (from Rome) and Sam (from our Sudan office) our newly arrived head of aviation confirm I can have a helicopter for tomorrow, take off at 9:30 to fly to the border, to meet with our programme staff there. We assemble a team of 6, file our security clearances online, and fill in a local travel authorization which Gwyn processes.

19:15: We get confirmation for the helicopter. All set. Luigi goes around and gets the names and UNLP numbers of the staff who will fly with us, so we can file a flight manifest.

19:30: a session of signing local purchase orders and finance papers, catching up with email.

20:00 the head of our implementing partner in Haiti calls me back. His team will drive from Port-au-Prince tomorrow to meet us in Jimani. We prepare the food logistics.

20:15 for two weeks in a row, I have been cross with the admin staff, normally working in our Panama office, as they are always staying up to 11 pm in the office. They can not keep that rythm, so I am happy to see them packing up their laptops. I hope they won't cheat and go to their rooms to work!

21:00 More emails, signing papers. WINGS releases. A debrief with a PI person coming back from Haiti.

22:00 I remember Tine, my wife, asked me to book a flight for her to Rome. We were supposed to meet there, but I won't be there, so she will stay in my apartment. Last financial releases, cleaning up of my emails.

23:00 I am happy to see my bitching on the staff to leave earlier worked... They all left before 11 PM.. Maybe there is some authority left in me, hahaha... I call the front desk and ask them to lock up the office. As I walk to the reception, one more staff walks to the office "Sorry boss, I have one more email I forgot to send".. Darned.

24:00 End of the day. Maybe 3 am is not a good idea for tomorrow morning. Good night everyone!

00:15: Darned my authority has failed on me. In my last Email replication of the day, I get more mails from our staff here in Santo Domingo. They are still working. They cheated... They left the office, but are working from their rooms.

I will call it a day. And you know what my last thoughts for the day are? I am happy I have a comfortable bed, in a room. Not so for the hundreds of staff we have in Haiti. I feel lucky for me, sad for them. And hope we made a difference for them today. And for the two million beneficiaries we are serving there... To all of you in Haiti... Good night, our thoughts are with you!

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A day in service of Haiti

Yesterday, my day started at 3 am trying to catch up with emails. At 7 am I was off to a dentist as one of my teeth gave me a problem. Waited for 30 minutes and the dentist did not show up.
Back to the office, getting a hang of the things to do during the day. We got requests to find 1 million bracelets to be used in Haiti for a food distribution. We only found half a million, but it was too late. The food distribution crew in Haiti had changed their plans already. We are now looking at paper coupons to be used for the distribution, in different colours, printed in a particular way so we could avoid forgery. Our two procurement staff went off on a hunt.

While I was on route to a meeting, 1.5 tons of food supplies, rations for our own staff, were being loaded on the plane to Haiti. An hour later, I was back to the office.

Meanwhile we got an order in for 1 million bags to hold up to 12.5 kgs. Off went the procurement staff again.
Around the same time, we received about 15 new staff. Some to strengthen our office, some on their way to Haiti.

At 11 am, I received a phone call they needed an extra finance officer in Port-au-Prince, who needed to organise the new base camp which was being erected for our staff still sleeping in make-shift tents. One of our staff volunteered, packed her bags and checked out of the hotel. The problem was that she did not receive security clearance to fly out, and I spent about one hour on the telephone trying to get the clearance in. Five minutes before we had to close the flight manifest, I got the verbal OK from our security staff in HQ who was in contact with the security staff in Haiti. Our finance officer caught the flight just in time.

Our admin staff pulled out their hair as we had about 10 people on hold to fly off to Haiti, which was beyond the allocation of hotel rooms we had, and there was a shortage of rooms in Santo Domingo.

A group of air ops officers got their clearance, though, but they could not find tents in town, so they would have to sleep on the ground on the ground, in Port-au-Prince. They still flew after a final scramble for tents.

Meanwhile suppliers were coming in to show samples of paper and bags. A selection was made while we were still on the phone trying to get hold of tables and chairs for the new office tent in Haiti.

Meanwhile, I negotiated with the hotel about the delays to get OUR new office space. Next to me, a senior staff was organising the newly arrived travel officer, and finance staff. The logistics guys received two cargo airplanes carrying relief supplies for different agencies. About 50 trucks of food left for Haiti, and we dealt with a problem of the fuel supplies at the airport. One more staff was negotiating extra storage space at the port, and another was trying to arrange a mission for an incoming staff who would help us with the tracking of the truck movements to the border.

At 16:30 I gave a briefing for new staff, and at 17:00 we had the daily staff briefing,

I went for a smoke around 19h30, surprised it was already dark outside.

One thing came in after another, and after a final briefing with a new arrival, I crashed in bed at midnight.

Today was not much better, except that I only got up at 6 am.

Just got an urgent phone call from Haiti. They need half a dozen paper cutters to cut the coupons used at the food distribution.

Off we go. Another day in the paradise of Santo Domingo. At least we had a beautiful sunrise...

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Update from Santo Domingo - the 2nd wave.

It seems "the first wave emergency response" for the Haiti earthquake is over. Two weeks after the disaster, the first-responders who flew in to Haiti will slowly start to demobilize, to be replaced by new staff to stay for the next months.

At the same time, the structures of the response is now gearing for a longer term support. Teams are being reorganized, communications and facilities are being set up catering for an influx of staff and supplies, and things start to be more organised.

The main focus of our team right now is to ensure the relief supplies (for us, mainly food aid, and humanitarian cargo for other agencies) and aidworkers themselves, coming in through the Dominican Republic can go into Haiti fast.

As the office facilities in Haiti were destroyed, a new base camp and floating living quarters (a passenger ship which will anchor off Port-au-Prince) are about ready to be put in use, so our staff can move out of the make-shift tent camp. Over here, in Santo Domingo, we are setting up a supply chain (procurement and transport) to bring in food, office equipment and consumables for those accomodations and offices, so our staff has a minimum of comfort, other than a sleeping bag.

Days and nights are still merging into one. Last night, I crashed at 8 PM, exhausted after a full day of chasing security clearances, organising the '2nd wave' of support staff for our office, meetings with suppliers, the UN coordinator here, etc... I started my work day at 3 AM. Most of my time is spent on two things: organising and debugging. The first more looking to the future, and the second concentrating on adjustments in the present.

We are running well, I am proud of the team. We are ready for the second wave of the emergency response to start. A wave which will be large than the first initial response. And longer.

Picture of our team in Santo Domingo courtesy Enrique Restrepo

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The pipeline into Haiti

Eight days ago, which seems a lifetime ago right now, we were meeting in Rome, with the operational group, briefing about the Haiti earthquake emergency. The initial response teams had already been deployed, and the reports we got from the ground gave us a clear view of the enormity of the catastrophy, and the size of the humanitarian response it would require.

During the meeting, we realized that the destruction of the infrastructure inside Haiti would not allow us to bring humanitarian aid straight into the country, neither by air or sea. I stressed the need to beef up the logistics and support capacity we had in the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbour. While we were discussing the possibilities, my boss bent over to me, and asked: "Would you want to run that part of the operation". And I said "Yes".

That was at 10 am. Two hours later, senior management had agreed, and I got my "marching instructions": set up the logistics and support "pipeline" in the Dominican Republic. I asked to leave on Tuesday, so I had time to define what I would need in terms of people and structure, and to prepare myself.

On the Tuesday, I flew into Santo Domingo, the capital. As I walked into the office, I saw 30 people cramped into a space, suitable for maybe 10 people. Staff was working with 6 at a table of one.

The same day, we negotiate office and accommodation space at a local hotel, and the next day, we moved. Staff kept on flying in, either to work out of our "Dominican hub" or in transit to Haiti. This evening, I checked, and we already had 67 rooms occupied in the hotel, meaning 67 people were already working in our Santo Domingo office, excluding the logistics hubs we are currently establishing in Barahona and Jimani.

Our operation is supporting the food "pipeline" into Haiti, transporting 40 trucks of food per day, soon to be increased to 60 trucks per day. We also have two passenger planes and one cargo plane which fly into Haiti twice or three times. We don't only transport food, but also ferry people and humanitarian aid into Haiti for other agencies. And it is only the beginning.

Since I landed, the operation has rapidly increased in size, and will continue to do so. Days and nights fade into one. I concentrated in organising the office structure, and creating an environment where my staff could work. We are working out of two converted conference rooms in the hotel, squatting with our laptops at conference tables with admin staff, procurement people, the air operations officers and the logistics group. As I walk around the rooms, I overhear conversations about flight and cargo bookings, people negotiating warehouse space, deals being made about jet fuel, travel bookings, offloading planes, security clearances, the purchasing of drinking water, and situation reports. It is a positive, 'we-can' atmosphere. I can see people smile, and enjoy the work the do. This is the stuff they like, the core of a humanitarian aid spirit.

And I have great staff. They know their work, I don't have to do much, other than a bit of guidance here and there, and for the rest, just be the "oil in the machinery". Each group, be it the logisticians, air ops people, procurement staff, or the travel people, all know what to do and how to do it. I see small teams working on the deployment of the helicopters, the flight schedule of the next days, the increase of our trucking capacity or simply putting together the contact list of those operating in the country. I am proud of them.

And inbetween all of it, Jayne stands up and shouts "Quiet everyone, who has bloodtype B+"? One of our staff member in Haiti dug his two children out of the rubble of what once was his house, and we evacuated them into Santo Domingo. One of the children was going into shock and the hospital lacked B+ blood. A staff member raised her hands, and she was driven to the bloodbank. Meanwhile the hotel staff started an SMS campaign to find more B+ blood and in one hour came up with a list of 8 donors. The child was saved. For now that is, he remains in critical condition.

Meanwhile we continue to get 'shopping lists' from our people on the ground in Haiti. The need instant coffee, sun screen, water, toilet paper... I admire them. In between the trauma of having experienced the quake, they continue to operate for 18 hours a day. With a complete lack of any basic comfort. Living and working in temporary tents. I think of them, as I am sitting in my comfortable hotel room, one hour's flight away. I wish them well. They have a daunting task ahead of them. I wished they could see how dedicated we are to serve them, and their work. We, our office, is committed to keep "the pipeline" going. The virtual flow of humanitarian aid, and survival assets.

We are committed.

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Haiti: When aidworkers need aid

Colleague Roxanne wrote an excellent post about the complexity of the humanitarian operations in Haiti.

I can add this: I just got of the teleconference with our staff on the ground in Haiti. When the earthquake struck, they saw buildings collapsing all around them. Of the UN compound only one building remained half standing up. It took over a day before anyone had any overview if we accounted for all the staff, leave alone their family members, national and international staff alike.
While the enormity of the humanitarian needs was immediately clear, staff started to provide humanitarian aid, while still left with the question if their brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, aunts and nieces were ok.

Many people were buried under the rubble, many lost their houses, and our staff was no exception. Even up to today, some are still trying to find out if family members are still alive. Most lost their homes. This morning, one of our staff came with his child in his arms, a child he pulled out of the ruins of his house the night before. The child needed urgent medical care, care which was not available.

The office was evacuated, and they set up a temporary base in make-shift tents. Most of the staff still sleeps in the cars. Just as I left the office today, people were bringing me sleeping mats and mosquito nets, medical kits and first aid kits, for our own staff. Stuff which I will bring with me, when flying to the Dominican Republic tomorrow, stuff which will go onto the next plane out of Santo Domingo.

While this was still going on, food distributions, despite the logistical and security challenges and the uncertainty of their own well-being, went on. Aid was being delivered.

It is easy for us, remotely, in our comfortable chair, to judge if relief efforts are going well or not, if sufficient aid is being delivered. But it is, despite all odds, including staffs' own well being.

Their commitment deserves our respect. They surely have my respect. And I vow that the moment I hit the ground in the Dominican Republic, not only will I ensure my devotion to the delivery of aid, but I also vow I will ensure we take care of the well-being our staff.

Picture courtesy WFP/Alejandro Lopez Chicheri

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I am off to the Haiti emergency

Haiti: thousands of people did not survive the earthquake. Two million people will require food assistance.
Over the past days, many people from our organisation have already left to strengthen the team we had already on the ground in Haiti, and to set up the support operations in the Dominican Republic.

I don't often write about the humanitarian work I actually do, in an attempt to isolate my work from my blog. This, I can say: Tuesday morning, I am off on a plane to the Dominican Republic to help set up and manage the support operation in Haiti's neighbouring country. It will be the main food and humanitarian supply pipeline for the months to come.

I got the advanced warning on Friday morning, got confirmation in the afternoon, and received further instructions over the weekend. On Monday, I will pull in all the information I need, and Tuesday early morning I am on a plane.

Initially, I will be gone for two months, but I am not sure for how long I will stay. Two days gave me time to say goodbye to my loved ones, and to prepare myself. "Leaving on a jet plane" can not be more appropriate.

I will be posting updates as much as I can.

Picture courtesy WFP/Alejandro Lopez Chicheri

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How to get the latest humanitarian information on the earthquake in Haiti

Tuesday afternoon, January 12th, the worst earthquake in 200 years - 7.0 in magnitude - struck less than ten miles from the Caribbean city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The initial quake was later followed by twelve aftershocks greater than magnitude 5.0.

Structures of all kinds were damaged or collapsed, from shantytown homes to national landmarks. It is still very early in the recovery effort, but millions are likely displaced, and thousands are feared dead as rescue teams from all over the world are now descending on Haiti to help where they are able.

If you are a humanitarian aid worker, or just generally interested in the situation in Haiti:

1. You can find the latest updates via a search on Humanitarian News
   
2. If you'd rather use an RSS feed, the same updates can be automatically delivered to you via this customized newsfeed
   
3. If you want the updates delivered via email, use the xFruits RSS-to-mail tool. Where you need to fill in the URL, use:
   http://humanitariannews.org/opensearch/node/Haiti%20earthquake
   

Picture courtesy Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images

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Picture of the day: Pakistan earthquake

An earthquake survivor sits on the rubble of his collapsed house near Ziarat, Pakistan. (Full)

More Pictures of the Day on The Road

Picture courtesay REUTERS/Athar Hussain

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Picture of the day: Survivor

A quake survivor tries to make the most of what is left of his home in Yinghua, China. The earthquake on May 12th killed 65,000 people and left 5 million homeless.

More Pictures of the Day on The Road.

Picture courtesy Oded Balilty (AP/Times)

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News: Humanitarian airlift to China

The boys and girls from the UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) have been busy the past weeks.

There were several airlifts of relief goods into Myanmar, and since a week, relief agencies requested for the shipment of humanitarian goods to China, in support of the earthquake disaster.

Yesterday and last night, an Airbus 310 from Skycargo (Emirates Airlines) was loaded with relief goods from the Italian Civil Protection. Contrary to the normal practices, the plane was parked on the civilian side of Brindisi airport, so all goods had to be trucked to other side of the airport. All stuff is fixed on special pallets before being weighed and loaded onto the plane.

The cargo consisted of family tents and a full field hospital from the Italian Civil Protection, one of the agencies that stores their goods at the UNHRD depots in Brindisi.

The loading crew was ready at 2 am and the plane took off a few hours later. Next stop: China earthquake zone.

Pictures courtesy Lucien Jaggi (WFP/UNHRD)

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Picture of the Day: Trapped in China

A rescuer holds the hand of a trapped student at Wudu Primary School on the outskirts of Mianzhu, in Sichuan Province, China.
Rescue workers across southwestern China struggle to reach the tens of thousands of people who remain buried in the aftermath of the earthquake, as the death toll climbs above 13,000. (Full)

More "Pictures of the Day" on the Road.

Picture courtesy of Chen Jianli (Xinhua via Reuters)

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