Monday 12 July 2010
Haiti Earthquake: ShelterBox key to survival 6 months on
This Haitian family sleep secure under a ShelterBox tents but thousands of others still need our help. Photograph: Mark Pearson
Six months after the world was rocked by one of the worst disasters it has ever witnessed, the huge financial commitment to rebuilding permanent shelter has had little impact for the hundreds of thousands of families displaced by the earthquake.
As land ownership issues and logistics delay the massive rebuilding efforts needed, the basic tarpaulin shelters received by the majority of those made homeless is proving little match for heavy rains and the hurricane season.
Additional strain is put on the capital, Port-au-Prince, as host families are unable to support those who lost everything and people are migrating back to the struggling city.
ShelterBox Response Team volunteer, Per Dahlstrom (CA), described the situation as ‘real misery’.
During his recent trip to Haiti, distributing ShelterBox disaster relief tents, he witnessed the football-pitch sized camps where in five foot by five foot areas families had just a tarpaulin held up with branches to call home. Per said: ‘The conditions were squalid and every time it rains the ground just turns to muck’.
Phenomenal resilience
These heavy rains are now a daily occurrence, washing the streets with litter and posing further risk through the spread of diseases.
Per worked to provide shelter for orphans who were returning to the city as their host families struggled to cope – returning to the only stability they know, the school they attended before the earthquake but those are now just a distant memory.
Tom Henderson, ShelterBox Founder and CEO said: ‘The resilience of the Haitian people is phenomenal but they’re still in desperate need of our help. The shelter provided by tarps isn’t safe, isn’t secure and will not stand up to the heavy winds and rains we can expect in the hurricane season.’
The ShelterBox disaster relief tent undergoes extensive testing. The tent, and its poles, are tested in wind and rain tunnels, with winds reaching up to 120kph. In Haiti, tens of thousands of families are now rebuilding their lives in these tents. The first of these tents were erected in January and they remain to be a secure, safe shelter for thousands of families whose only alternative is a tarp or a transitional shelter that has not been built.
The below video shows the ShelterBox tent undergoing testing:
The response to the Haiti earthquake has been the biggest, longest and most complex in the ten-year history of the international disaster relief charity.
The first ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) was mobilized 12 minutes after the earthquake struck. Now, six months later, 22,192 ShelterBoxes have been delivered in Haiti, enough aid for more than 220,000 people.
‘This has been the most challenging disaster we’ve ever had to face. The scale of the destruction was beyond belief,’ said Tom Henderson.
More than 50 highly trained SRT members, from all walks of life, have now worked in Haiti for ShelterBox.
One of the SRT members who has spent time in Haiti is David Hatcher, a retired police Chief Superintendent with 37 years experience.
'Enormous difference'
He said: ‘I thought I had seen tragedy at its worst – the sadness of cot death, the suffering of those in road accidents, the grief spawned by the delivery of death messages, involvement in the strife of the 1984 miners dispute, the consequences of the enormous loss of life in the Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster, to the repeated involvement in rail crashes at Paddington and Potters Bar.
‘However, after 37 years of policing at the sharp end, and in the senior ranks, nothing prepared me for the experience of the dilemmas that Haiti is still going through.
‘During my time in Haiti it seemed that whatever I did made only a tiny difference to the whole situation, yet I also knew that everyone we helped was just one more step in making an enormous difference to the future wellbeing of that family for the rest of their lives.’
ShelterBox is committed to doing the most for the most and delivering aid to families who are most in need. To this effect, ShelterBox has formed close, working relationships with partners such as the International Office for Migration, the French Red Cross, Handicap International, the Jenkins/Penn Haitian Relief Organisation and ACTED in order to distribute to the most vulnerable demographics.
Tom Henderson added: ‘Our staff, volunteers and supporters the world over have worked tirelessly, with dedication, passion and commitment, to deliver emergency shelter and life saving supplies to thousands of Haitian families. Wherever you look in Port au Prince you can see a ShelterBox tent.
‘This wouldn’t have been possible without the overwhelming generosity of our donors. The earthquake moved people to act, and act they have, in a way we have never witnessed before.
‘During the coming months we’ll be sending another 5,000 ShelterBoxes into Haiti which will give families the safe, secure shelter they need to start rebuilding their lives.’
The below slideshow of images shows ShelterBox's response to the Haiti earthquake, from the first boxes being packed to being distributed in country:
