Friday 07 May 2010
From the field: SRT account from Haiti's mountains
With the help of the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), ShelterBoxes are delivered to Haiti's Grands Ravines regionShelterBox Response Team member Phil Duloy (UK) was deployed to Haiti in February to assist with the ongoing relief effort delivering emergency shelter to those made homeless by the devastating earthquake of January 12. The 29-year-old spent nearly two months providing emergency shelter to those who needed it most.
By the time he left Haiti in late April, Phil and his fellow SRT members had delivered ShelterBoxes to up to 35,000 people.
Read Phil’s account of his work delivering disaster relief tents to Dufort, a mountainous community hit by the earthquake:
‘My favorite work in Haiti involved partnering with other agencies to head into the remote mountainous regions south of Leogane and Grand Goaves, accessible only by donkey and helicopter. A group called Handicap International (HI) had a presence on the ground in Haiti before the quake and was able to send workers up into the mountains on foot to survey the needs of the people there. Handicap International assessed people’s needs based on the extent of damage to their home and on their respective vulnerabilities, which included extremes of age, pregnancy, illness, and injury; our ShelterBox equipment was ideally suited to the most vulnerable.
‘On my last mountain distribution, our team leader Nicola Jones (UK), Olivier Dorighel from Handicap International and I left on what was to be the first of three United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) cargo helicopter flights to deliver shelter to Dufort. Like some of the other helipads we’d used, this one was cut into the top of a near-vertical ridge that rose to nearly 2,000 meters. The ridge was just a little wider than the body of the helicopter, with its blades spinning above steep drops on either side.
'Storm arrives'
‘With the blades still running, the three of us, along with the local population, unloaded the first consignment of 125 tents, enough emergency shelter for up to 1,250 people. After unloading, the helicopter returned to the airbase to reload without us. We helped carry the tents into a communal area in the village and completed a demonstration of the tents to representatives of each of the smaller villages to which the tents would eventually be carried. We then hiked back to the landing pad to await the return of the helicopter with its second load.
‘Nicola, Olivier and I passed the time talking amongst ourselves and joking with a group of local children. We’d been waiting for more than an hour and sensed something wasn’t right. We turned on the satellite phone and called the UNHAS office in Port-au-Prince. They said there was bad weather coming in, and all the afternoon’s flights had been called back and grounded. Fortunately we’d come well prepared with water purification, ration packs, emergency blankets, waterproofs, navigational equipment and the tent we’d used for the demonstration that wasn’t due to be distributed until the next day.
‘We didn’t end up needing to eat ration packs that night because some of the villagers invited us to have a meal of rice, beans, and plantains with them. Afterwards, we walked to the village edge and watched hundreds of glowing green orbs floating down towards us from the summit of the mountains. One of the villagers told us that the fireflies’ breeding grounds had been exposed by a landslide caused by the January quake and they had been incredibly active ever since.
‘The storm arrived and the rains caused the fireflies to hide underneath the leaves of the palms, ferns, and maize. We retreated to our beds, which at that point were hovering slightly, along with the demonstration tent, over a wide plain of four inches of water. I was pleased to see that nothing was getting wet, knowing the same would be true for about 1,200 other people in their new ShelterBox tents in the nearby areas.
Phil and his team delivered aid to up to 35,000 people left homeless by the Haiti earthquake
‘In the morning the second helicopter came and I hopped in with one of the villagers and helped pass the tents to the people outside. We repeated our tent demonstration to another group of villages and returned to the helipad. We unloaded the final 125 tents, enough for another 1,250 people, and got on board for the trip back to Port au Prince.
‘During the weeks I was in Haiti, my team-mates and I distributed shelter to approximately 35,000 people, more than 6,000 of whom live in the remote mountainous regions around Grands Ravines. I still feel a bit sick to my stomach when it starts to rain, but I feel great about the work I did while there.’
