15th Jan 10 at 19:48Oxfam International: Oxfam's Haiti response
Louis Belanger, spokesperson of Oxfam, reporting at the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Basically today, aid delivery has started. Oxfam in Port-au-Prince has started distributing picks and shovels to people with the community to help rescue people who are still stuck under the rubble. In Oxfam more generally we're going to be shipping a British Airways cargo plane of 10 tons of goods of technical emergency equipment. So everything between water bladders in order to move the water quickly, to buckets, shelter tents, latrines, and everything else that is needed. The plane will leave at 2 o'clock UK time so it's already on its way to Santo Domingo. Once it lands there we're going to see how we can ship this 10 tons of humanitarian relief aid to Port-au-Prince either by road or to the airport if things can improve there. I think people have heard that the situation at the airport is a little bit difficult. The aid is arriving very quickly, and people at the airport have difficulties coping. But we're hopeful that things are going to get better in terms of the aid delivery and aid co-ordination. And I think you can expect that to improve quite a bit. Communications will improve quite a bit, so that's good news - it means that we're able to talk to one another and co-ordinate better, establish where are the needs, establish the neighbourhoods where we need to move in quickly. And we're busy doing that to make sure everybody knows what they have to do so we can move in as quickly as possible. Now, you know, we understand the frustration that it's slow. We share that frustration. We would like to deliver that aid as quickly as possible, but you know, the first three days have been difficult for everybody. Oxfam's co-ordinator, as we speak, the one who's co-ordinating the entire aid operation, lost her mother. We've lost a colleague as well in the earthquake on Tuesday. So we're part of this, we're with the Haitian people and we're working our hearts out to make sure that the aid gets delivered as quickly as possible. Now, as I said, it's all about co-ordinating today and this weekend, and hopefully we can deliver, especially water - we hear that this is the number one priority right now. People need water. It's pretty hot in Haiti, in Port-au-Prince, right now. One thing that Oxfam will be looking at is looking at some of the rural areas. The epicentre, where the earthquake struck, was in the rural areas and it seems to be a little bit forgotten. So we've got some teams in the north, Oxfam Quebec is in the north, so we're going to see what we can do in order to move in in some of the most remote areas of Haiti. It is a very underdeveloped country, the roads are very difficult, basic services are almost non-existent, so the last thing these people needed was an earthquake so they certainly need our help, and we're going to go there and see what we can do to help them. So this is the podcast for Friday. I'm going to be doing this hopefully every day in the next few weeks, so keep in touch. Thanks, bye.
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