A DAY IN HAITI

ShelterBox Response Team members Tom Newman and Greg Rogers have been distributing tents in Jacmel. They distributed 250 ShelterBoxes in the area which is on the south of the island.

ShelterBox Head of Operations, John Leach said: ‘We are continuing to spread our net beyond Port au Prince .  A newly arrived two man team comprising of Greg Rogers (UK) and Tom Newman (UK) headed south to Jacmel.  They’ve wasted no time in assessing needs and setting up the first camps. Tom, who is on his first deployment, has been doing a great job in running logistics from Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and now has his chance to get out in the field.’

Please visit www.shelterbox.org to find out ways you can support ShelterBox’s work around the globe.

With rains becoming more frequent, most displaced earthquake survivors in Haiti don’t have adequate shelter more than six weeks after the quake.

Story by BY PATRICIA MAZZEI – Miami Herald Staff Report

BOUTILIER, Haiti — The thick gray tarpaulins could not come soon enough to this little mountain neighborhood high in the mountains above Port-au-Prince where the earth is brick red and the unpaved roads are littered with dusty gray rubble and rocks.

More than six weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake that wrecked the capital and its environs, Nepalese soldiers from the United Nations distributed tarps in Boutilier to quake survivors grateful to finally get something to put over their heads.

“I was sleeping on the ground under the rain,” said Micheline Michelle, 43, who picked up a couple of the folded tarps in boxes and water in a plastic, military green container labeled ‘‘Property of the U.S. Government.”

Her wait for materials to build a shelter brings into sharp focus the monumental task of bringing aid to people in all corners of the greater Port-au- Prince area where tens of thousands of quake survivors are living outdoors by their crumbled homes and in spontaneous camps under sheets, towels and pieces of fabric that have been soaked and muddied by rain at least twice in the past two weeks.

One of the new camps in Port-au-Prince is ready to be used by

needed families that lost their homes after the earthquake.

by HECTOR GABINO / EL NUEVO HERALD STAFF

The Haitian government and international relief agencies have made providing shelter a priority for the estimated 1.2 million people left homeless by the quake. Emergency shelter materials had reached 330,000 people — about 30 percent — as of Monday, according to the United Nations.

Distributing plastic sheeting and other materials to make sturdier shelters has been slow as relief work focused on immediate life-saving and medical needs. And government and relief officials have debated over whether to prioritize providing tents, which have a defined shape and size, or tarps, which people can fashion into their own shelter.

A microlender was able to distribute cash in Haiti much more quickly than traditional banks.  How microcredit can play a larger role in disaster recovery.

Feb 10, 2010 – By Mac Margolis and Lucy Conger | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Hollywood couldn’t have done it better. Late in the afternoon on Jan. 22, an armored car packed with $2 million in cash rolled out of J.P. Morgan Chase headquarters in downtown Miami, headed to the Homestead Air Force Base. Thirty-four bricks of bank notes packed into ordinary office supply boxes were loaded onto a C-17 transport plane redeployed from Langley, Va., and dispatched to Haiti, lighting up switchboards at the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, the Federal Reserve, and military rescue bases in Port-au-Prince.

Before dawn the next day, the stash was on a helicopter bound for 34 branches of microlender Fonkoze. While Port-au-Prince’s nine commercial banks were in a shambles and Western Union was paralyzed, half of Fonkoze’s 42 agencies were up and running in four days, and all but two of the rest within a week. The amounts were trifling: no more than a few dollars per client. But for tens of thousands of desperate Haitians, the nimble infusion of cash amid the chaos and ruin literally meant survival. For the legions of aid bureaucrats, charities, civic groups, and emergency organizations struggling to get a grip on the Western hemisphere’s worst natural disaster in memory, Fonkoze’s nationwide client base of 200,000 depositors (50,000 of whom are also borrowers) was a ready-made lifeline. Could microcredit be the new Red Cross?

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Immediately following Frank McKinney’s return from his successful search and rescue mission in Haiti, the Caring House Project Foundation has been actively engaged in providing emergency food relief.    CHPF has chartered planes on a now weekly basis to bring emergency food consisting of rice, beans, cooking oil and corn meal along with tents for shelter. Many of you have been so generous in making donations to help make this happen, thank you!

We are currently in the midst of sending over 1/2 million meals (that’s right, 500,000!), along with temporary shelter for 4,000. Please don’t get donor fatigue on us! We need your help!

Please be sure to keep up with our latest Haiti relief efforts  by reading and sharing Frank’s firsthand account: http://www.frank-mckinney.com/blog.asp?article=168 .

To donate please visit:  http://www.frank-mckinney.com/donate.aspx .

Orlando Hotelier Harris Rosen stands in front of Little Haiti Houses, a one-room home on display inside the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel off Universal Blvd. in Orlando, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.  

The house — built to resist hurricane-force winds and earthquakes — is a prototype of the “Little Haiti House Project,” brainchild of Orlando hotelier Harris Rosen in what he says is the second and more sustained phase of his relief effort for survivors of last month’s earthquake.

Rosen’s project is one of several ideas from Americans trying to help Haiti figure out how to dig out of the rubble and move forward. Others include fiberglass domes, plastic water containers made into bricks and shipping containers turned into houses.

On Wednesday, Rosen gave an Orlando Sentinel reporter a tour of the prototype of one of his Little Haiti homes.

There’s a big scramble to build shelter to protect Haiti’s earthquake victims from impending rains, but it is likely that tents and lean-tos will become permanent slum housing.

BY FRANCES ROBLES AND ANDRES VIGLUCCI   frobles@MiamiHerald.com

It’s midday in Port-au-Prince and the sun is beating down from a cloudless sky.

It’s good news, another day without clouds means another day without rain.  But it won’t last.  Everybody knows the rainy season is now only a few weeks away, and a million people have no proper shelter.

A park on the edge of Port-au-Prince is sprouting what look like giant white field mushrooms.   They are actually large white tents, hundreds of them.  It’s the first proper tent encampment to be built since the earthquake. Along a high concrete wall workers are digging latrines, and building shower blocks.

In a few days from now 3,000 refugees from the centre of Port-au-Prince will start moving in here. But they will be the lucky few. 

Watch the video in this link to see what ShelterBox is doing   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8488728.stm

‘Huge number’

Despite repeated calls from everyone – from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to Haitian President Rene Preval – only a few thousand tents have so far arrived in Haiti.

Mr Gascon says there are simply not enough tents

“The priority for flights has been given to bringing in food and medical supplies,” says Christopher Gascon from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

He is in charge of building the mushroom tent camp. He has 40,000 more tents on their way from Panama, but by ship, not by air. And even when those do arrive, they will not be nearly enough.

It seems extraordinary, but so vast are Haiti’s needs that there are simply not enough of the right sort of tents in the world right now to house all the refugees.

“We are talking about a huge number of tents,” says Mr Gascon.  “These sort of tents are not widely available. They will have to be made, ordered from China. If you want 200,000 tents now its not going to happen, they are not there.”

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The Executive Director of Food For The Poor, Angel Aloma, returned 36-hours ago from Haiti where his organization is working day and night to help Haiti recover from the earthquake.

I have traveled with Angel in Haiti on prior mission trips there.

Donate Here:  Food for the Poor

The ShelterBox Response Team in Haiti has set up emergency shelter for up to 1,000 Haitians at Henfrasa Stadium in Delmas, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Response Team member Lasse Petersen said: ‘We agreed with the local community that the initial tent allocation would be for families with pregnant women and families with newborns.

‘Port au Prince is overflowing with encampments of people sleeping out without basic shelter. The demand remains enormous, but with the help of our donors, ShelterBox has flown 5 aircraft and over 3,000 ShelterBoxes to aid those left homeless by the quake.

‘In the hospitals, orphanages and local communities we are making a difference and thousands of more boxes are en route.’

For more information please visit http://www.shelterbox.org