Update for CHF International: Haiti on February 12, 2010

CHF Haiti Update, 2.11.2010
Notes from the field – Thursday February 11, 2010

WHERE WE ARE WORKING RIGHT NOW: We are working Port Au Prince (PaP) (namely Delmas, Petion-Ville, Cite Soleil, Port Au Prince and Carrefour). We are also working in Grand Goave, Jacmel, Petit Goave, Leogane, Petit Guinee, Cap Haitien, Martissant St. Marc and Gonaives as well as a host of other communities across Haiti. For a map of our operations, please visit the website at www.chfinternational.org

ON THE GROUND IN HAITI RIGHT NOW:
CHF continues to work by aiding first responder groups in emergency response: lending our facilities, equipment and logistics to assist in the relief operations. We are supporting numerous first responder organizations and our established network of local partners – we are encouraged by the number of our local partners who have stood up in recent days. CHF is providing support to international organizations including Handicap International, IOM, Doctors Without Borders, IMC, Save the Children, Habitat for Humanity, Partners in Health, Spanish, French and Haitian Red Cross, The Boy Scouts, Medecins du Monde Suisse as well as our established network on local and community organizations.

CHF and Caterpillar machines continued to clear truckloads of rubble today – making important strides in clearing areas at Haitian Ministries that will attempt to restart this week.
CHF continues to work with partners Harris Corporation and NetHope to provide wireless connectivity and communications equipment to the international, local and government entities. The wireless network now covers the majority of the PaP basin.
Harris also established a Land Mobile Radio (LMR) network with a trunking repeater that services over 250 handheld radios for CHF International, USAID, the FAA, ICE, and other emergency responders. To assist CHF International with the command and control of their assets, a Situational Awareness Systems was established and is in operation by the leadership on the ground. We have also been equipped with two satellite systems to assist in their mainland backhaul, internet connectivity, and long distance phone communications at their headquarters, and an additional satellite terminal at a remote aid station in Petit Goave
CHF welcomed Terex yesterday to evaluate the ability of integrating crushing into our rubble removal operations – creating usable building material out of the destruction.
CHF has deployed over 110 teams of 14 (employing over 1400 Haitians) in our cash for work programs (HIMO) in five cities – Port Au Prince, Carrefour, Delmas, Peguyville, and Petit Goave
CHF has now deployed cash for work teams in Saint Marc, Gonaives, and Cap Haitien in order to provide economic opportunities for IDPS – internally displaced persons.
CHF-Haiti Blog Update - Feb. 11, 2010: Haiti Earthquake Survivors Vulnerable to Torrential Rains. This piece is by Joel Rubin and appeared this morning in the LA TIMES.

Few things are certain in Jislene Brisson's life these days. The Haitian mother of four lost her husband and her house in the earthquake that ravaged this impoverished country a month ago. She has little money left and the emergency food deliveries that aid groups are still struggling to establish have yet to reach her and her children, she said. In fact, there is perhaps only one thing Brisson can count on and it terrifies her: The rains are coming to Haiti and she is not prepared. "I don't have a roof, I don't have anything," the 49-year-old said, slapping the backside of one hand into the palm of the other. "No one has come to talk to us about shelter. When the clouds start closing in, I'll be asking God. I'll be putting my arms up in the air and asking, 'What am I going to do with my children?' "Next month or in April, a punishing rainy season is certain to arrive, bringing with it the daily downpours that swamp this downtrodden capital city. Then will come the hurricane season, which last year delivered a series of deadly storms. With an estimated 1.1 million people left homeless by the quake, which killed an estimated 200,000, shelter experts are scrambling in a race against Mother Nature, fearing the rain could magnify the humanitarian crisis. Some displaced Haitians have been taken in by family or friends. The majority, however, are still living in the streets or in densely packed tent camps that have popped up in squares and other open plots in Port-au-Prince and nearby communities. Some have been lucky enough to get one of the durable, modern tents being handed out in a helter-skelter fashion by the U.S. military and other groups. Most have been left on their own to cobble together flimsy tents made of bedsheets, scraps of plastic and metal and branches hacked from trees. Brisson and her children have set their makeshift shelter on a 6-foot-by-6-foot scratch of land on the edge of a camp where about 600 families are living, in the Delmas area of the city. The roof is a faded, peach-colored bedsheet and the walls are a mix of tapestries and bed linens. Inside, a jumble of thin blankets covers the dirt floor. A foot or two separates her tent from the next one. "This is the front door," Brisson said with a rueful laugh, tugging on a blue-striped sheet while she sat outside doing laundry in large metal buckets.

These tent villages could easily become disaster zones, said Alberto Wilde, country director for CHF International, an aid group specializing in shelter issues. With many of the city's drainage canals and ravines blocked with the rubble of collapsed buildings, concern is deepening that the rains will result in deadly flash floods. "Our fear is not that people are going to get wet when the rains come," Wilde said. "Our fear is that they will get swept away. We are running against time." Disease is another likelihood when the skies open, with the downpours sure to leave the camps a fetid morass of mud and human waste. Most of the camps lack sufficient latrines and could easily become breeding grounds for malaria, cholera and other deadly illnesses, medical experts say. Wilde's group and more than a dozen others like it are trying to jump-start a push to move the huge homeless population into sturdier shelters. Haitian President Rene Preval recently gave the go-ahead for the shelter organizations to pursue a plan to build thousands of one-room structures with concrete floors, simple wooden frames, corrugated metal roofs and tarp walls. Designed to last about three years, the houses are meant for single families. They come with a solar panel on the roof for electricity and can be erected in about four hours, Wilde said. Wilde and other shelter experts acknowledged that Haitians may look to stay in these homes longer than intended and could, down the road, begin to rent them or sell them to others. But such concerns have to take a back seat to the more pressing issue of the coming rains. "Right now, we must be thinking beyond these tents," said Tim Callaghan, head of USAID's emergency response team in Haiti, which is working closely with CHF International on the shelter issue. Each house costs about $900 and aid groups hope that they will be able to hire local labor with donated funds to do the majority of the construction. Similar programs were implemented after the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004 and the major earthquake in Peru in 2006.

Questions and challenges loom, however. One of the most pressing is where to build the houses. The aid groups hope some families will be able to build on the sites of their destroyed houses, but that may be impossible in many cases, as rubble clearance has been slow. Shelter organizations are considering plans to build houses for about 10,000 families at each of several locations in and around Port-au-Prince. One hurdle is finding adequate areas the Haitian government is willing to cede. And the tarp structures are built to withstand hurricanes of moderate strength, but not the major storms that sometimes pummel the island. Perhaps most discouraging is that little of the wood needed to build the homes is available in Haiti and it remains unclear how quickly it will arrive because relief agencies are still focused on bringing in food, water and medical equipment. Wilde's group had only enough wood and tarps to build fewer than 100 of the structures as of Saturday, he said. USAID has imported thousands of tarps, but without sufficient wood the structures cannot be built. And even when materials do arrive, few construction firms in Haiti have the capacity to build several hundred of the houses at a time, Wilde said. "I feel like I have been delivered," said Malikan Dominique, a 51-year-old construction worker who had no means to rebuild his family's home after the earthquake and received a tarp house. "I am very grateful."

News from Haiti – Compiled from various reports

LOGISTICS

Incoming flights to Port-au-Prince airport continues to drop and now averages 74 per day (from its peak of 160 flights) as incoming air cargo increasingly shifts to sea transport.
The Port-au-Prince port is handling an average of 350 containers per day. The installation of two floating docks at the port, will be completed by the weekend and will increase capacity to a possible 1,500 containers per day. UNHAS is establishing a passenger service to locations within Haiti, in affected and non-affected departments.
The United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) has agreed to postpone the implementation of the new access regime until there are clearly articulated procedures in place that are shared with the NGO community in advance. The NGO Coordination Cell will work with OCHA and UNDSS on these procedures.
Government of Haiti Civil Protection Agency assessed number of deaths at 212,000, and the estimated number of injured at more than 300,000.
More than 1.2 million people are in spontaneous settlements and 467,701 people have left Port-au-Prince for outlying departments. Over 162,000 people have arrived in Artibonite department and over 90,000 in Centre department.
In Leogane approximately 14,000 people are living in spontaneous settlement sites, while others are living closer to their destroyed homes. An estimated total of 80,000 to 120,000 people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Leogane commune.

FOOD AND WATSAN

On February 10, relief agencies distributed emergency food assistance benefiting approximately 170,000 people in metropolitan Port-au-Prince. Since the earthquake, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) and partners have provided emergency food assistance to more than 2.5 million people, including more than 1.5 million people to date through the 16-site distribution system.
On February 9, the DART advisors conducted a follow-up to a previous assessment of the Delmas 33 settlement site, where more than 8,000 people currently reside on the school grounds. The assessment revealed that, due to recent increases in the site’s population, new arrivals now occupy an area previously identified by the USAID/DART for latrine placement, compounding sanitation concerns.
On February 9, the USAID/DART WASH advisors also conducted a second assessment of the expanding Petionville Club settlement site. The WASH officers reported progress in ensuring the population’s access to sanitation facilities and clean water at the site, where Oxfam has installed a small water distribution network and constructed two sets of shower stalls and 61 latrines.
15 de-sludging trucks are in country (but not all are in affected areas). At least 90 more are needed. Agencies and donors are beginning to look now at procuring more trucks.
Water provision coverage has now reached 72% according to the Cluster lead with coverage of latrines at 5% of the requirement.

LIVELIHOODS

On February 9, the GoH approved the establishment of sub-working groups focused on small NGO partnering arrangements for expanded food distributions; rural interventions; food assistance impacts on local economies; cluster coordination with local governments; local food purchase; and food assistance impacts on long-term programs, such as cash- and food-for-work, among other issue areas.
According to the USAID/DART, a team comprising 18 staff members from 11 humanitarian agencies is conducting an emergency market assessment (EMA) to examine the suitability of cash grants, market support mechanisms, and advocacy for addressing food and shelter needs and providing income-generating opportunities. The team expects to release preliminary EMA results on February 17.

SHELTER

On February 10, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies assumed the Shelter Cluster lead role, according to the USAID/DART shelter advisor. The former cluster lead, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), will continue to serve as the Non-Food Item Cluster lead.
During the formal cluster lead transition, IOM reported that approximately 366,335 people, or approximately 30 percent of displaced individuals, had received shelter assistance as of February 10. IOM noted that the figures are based on reports from 24 humanitarian agencies, although the number of individuals having received shelter assistance is likely higher due to ongoing distributions unreported to the Shelter Cluster lead.