We received this update today from Anne Toussaint Protection Advisor & Program Development Manager, CRS Haiti
Hanna wasn’t something that we saw coming. It was supposed to be a small storm that was just going to pass by the southern tip of Haiti. But it changed direction and lingered for several days. Many of my colleagues were caught in the field, caught in the flooding of Gonaives.
CRS staff in Haiti ready bags of peas as part of food supplies they’ll distribute to Haitians displaced by recent storms. Photo by Alix Innocent/CRS
In Haiti the streets are not closed like they are in the States. There are big potholes, open sewers. When the streets are completely flooded, and you’re tying to wade through the water, you can fall into these holes, or be taken away by the current.
I was fortunate that I got to wait out the storm from the safety of Port-au-Prince. It felt like a stormy day in the U.S. I had no idea how bad it was in the rest of the country until I started getting reports from the field. The things my colleagues saw were very graphic, people getting caught in the currents in Gonaives.
My first though was for the safety of women and children. Shelters are overcrowded. People are housed in churches and schools, neither of which is really equipped to house the number of people in need. With this level of overcrowding women and children become more vulnerable to violent attacks and sexual abuse. There are questions that we have to ask ourselves; are the men and women separated in the shelter? Are the shelters well lit and do they have separate bathroom facilities?
A colleague of mine was in a shelter—in a room with 400 people cramped together: women, men and children, with no access to hygiene. They have a little bit of food with nothing to do. It’s misery.
These questions arise after things die down a bit. It’s hard to do psychosocial work until the shelters are stable, and people have their basic needs met.
Sara A. Fajardo, Catholic Relief Services communications officer-Latin America/Caribbean, wrote this post from an interview with Anne Toussaint.
Posted
September 12th, 2008 in
Emergency, Flooding, Haiti, Hurricane by:
Catholic Relief Services |
2 Comments »
In this story based on a phone conversation with Holly Inurreta- CRS Regional Technical Advisor for Emergencies - she describes the scene on the ground following the fourth storm to blast Haiti in recent weeks. The photos below bear graphic witness to her narrative.
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Posted
September 9th, 2008 in
Emergency Response, Flooding, Haiti, Latin America by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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Holly Inurreta- CRS Regional Technical Advisor for Emergencies -is on the ground in Haiti. She spoke via phone today with CRS Communications Officer Sara Fajardo. Here’s a portion of the story that developed from that conversation:
It rained so hard on Saturday and Sunday that the water once again reached 10 feet high. The people had two days reprieve and are now back in the same situation. The city is rivers, and people don’t have boats. Our local partners will get out as soon as possible, and as soon as the water gets down to a moveable level they’ll be out distributing.
Holly said CRS and partners were able to bring some supplies to Gonaives, a coastal city thrashed by four storms in the past few weeks. She also notes that Haiti is likely to see more storms before the end of the Hurricane season.
Posted
September 8th, 2008 in
Emergency Response, Flooding, Haiti, Hurricane, Latin America, Relief by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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CNN spoke with CRS country representative Jennifer Poidatz and regional information officer Caroline Brennan on the flooding in northeastern India. The story reports on aid workers struggling to bring help to an area facing “some of the worst floods in generations“.
Posted
September 3rd, 2008 in
Asia, Bihar, Emergency Response, Flooding, India, Nepal by:
Catholic Relief Services |
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Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, president of Caritas Internationalis, has issued his annual Christmas message. Catholic Relief Services is a member of the 162-member Caritas Internationalis federation of Catholic relief, development and social services agencies around the world. A video version of this message is available at the Caritas Internationalis website.
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, president of Caritas Internationalis, delivers his Christmas message. Photo by Caritas Internationalis
2007 will be remembered as a year when flooding took a terrible toll on millions of lives across Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa.
Over 20 million people were affected in South Asia, Mexico had the worst floods for 50 years, and huge swaths of Africa from the Atlantic seaboard to the Indian Ocean were underwater. Caritas workers responded by providing food, medicine, shelter, solidarity and compassion.
An earthquake in Peru left tens of thousands homeless, while conflict in Congo, Darfur and Somalia continues to destroy innocent lives.
Caritas appealed for $65 million for humanitarian relief in 2007. Over 20 of its emergency appeals were flood- or weather-related, compared to seven the year before.
We must look toward addressing issues such as poverty which force people to live in flood-prone areas.
We must also look at the underlying causes of this flooding, especially at climate change and environmental degradation.
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Posted
December 19th, 2007 in
Caritas Internationalis, CRS Leadership, Emergency Response, Flooding by:
jrivera |
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