Haiti: A logistical nightmare

Timon Singh

In the days since the US put 12,000 marines on the ground in the disaster zone, there has been criticism of how the whole operation has been handled. With the military occupying the Port-au-Prince main airport, aid agencies have said that shipments of food and medical supplies have been delayed due to the influx of military traffic.

Medecins sans Frontieres' Francoise Saulnier has criticised the strong military presence saying that days of aid had been lost due to the wanton inefficiency, "We lost three days. And these three days have created a massive problem with infection, with gangrene, with amputations that are needed now, while we could have really spared this to those people."

Finding survivors

Despite these initial concerns, the US has stated that it is sending 4,000 extras sailors and marines to Haiti to help aid relief. However, while the military and aid agencies may be butting heads over how to go about helping the Haitian population, their presence on the island has already seen results.

Yesterday, eight days after the quake struck, three survivors were pulled from the rubble alive. One was an elderly woman who had been pinned under rubble in the Port-au-Prince cathedral for over a week, whilst the other two were a 10-year-old girl and her eight-year-old brother found by US rescue workers. Meanwhile, even more miraculous stories have been pouring in of survivors including one about a 15-day old baby being found alive in the rubble, despite being buried for half its life in wreckage. At a makeshift hospital, the child was reunited with its mother who had been forced to flee her home when the walls began to buckle. "It was the mercy of God", she cried.

Countless other problems

Since international rescue teams arrived, 121 people have been rescued from destroyed buildings but many are still being found by friends and relatives, however hopes are starting to dwindle and the focus is now shifting to the 1.5 million people that are now homeless.

Captain Joe Zahralban of the South Florida Urban Search and Rescue Team said: "You have to accept ... that the potential for survivability is extremely low. It gets to the point where you can only risk the rescuers' lives so much before you say, we don't think there is anybody left."

Finding survivors and organising make-shift hospitals and shelters aren't the only problems facing international teams; food distribution has also been a logistical nightmare with food riots, looting and fights breaking out over supplies.

Despite a massive food delivery project organised by the Olympic Committees of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, bureaucracy is holding up the influx of supplies from the United Nations.

The General Secretary of the Haiti Olympics committee, Alain Saint-Pierre, said to Sky News that local groups had essentially given up on relying on US and UN support. "I have sat in meetings from eight in the morning until the afternoon with them talking and doing nothing," he said.

"The bureaucracy is terrible. They have talked for days and still they don't move. Sitting on the runway is pointless."

While rumours of disagreements between the United States and the United Nations over jurisdiction are in the air, both sides have had their own problems in terms of food distribution; aid trucks have been overwhelmed forcing the US military to do aid drops by plane or helicopter. One drop by the 82nd Airborne saw aid pallets quickly swarmed by the thousands of refugees in make shift camps around Port-au-Prince, however food still isn't getting out to areas that need it.

Shattered infrastructure

With the country's communications down, co-ordinating aid efforts has become incredibly difficult for the international aid groups, especially considering Haiti's infrastructure was never that modernised before the earthquake.

However with the influx of US military presence, surely aid relief camps could be easily set up, protected ensuring an orderly distribution of food and supplies? For some reason, this isn't happening with food drops being the standard operating procedure, but there are areas where the situation is worsening.

Slums like Cite Soleil were already havens of desperation and crime, but the earthquake has made things worse. The destruction of a local prison has reportedly seen 4,000 prisoners escape into the populous and as such, looting and theft has become even more widespread with reports of lynching occurring.

What is clear is that unless the UN and US start working together to ensure an organised distribution of supplies, things are only going to get worse in Haiti.

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