Inside Disaster: Meet the Characters

By Katie — August 16, 2010 | 1 comment

Jean-Pierre Taschereau
Red Cross FACT Team Leader, Haiti

J.P. is the leader of the IFRC Field Assessment and Coordination Team in Haiti. He first worked for the Red Cross as a volunteer, helping to provide relief to people displaced by floods in his hometown of Sainte-Marie de Beauce, Quebec. Nineteen years later he is leading the largest single-country response in the Red Cross’ history. JP led the Red Cross’ earthquake response in Peru in 2007, and managed their hurricane response in Haiti in 2008 – but going into Haiti he knows this mission is different. A major disaster, in a capital city, in one of the poorest countries in the world.

The scale of the disaster and the population’s overwhelming need moves him and his team to call in 21 Emergency Response Units (ERUs) in the first two weeks of the disaster. He and his team immediately set priorities: health, then water, then relief, then food, then shelter.

As the situation on the ground changes, so do priorities. JP must adapt to constantly shifting realities, as displaced Haitians migrate, food insecurity grows, and the rainy season threatens hundreds of thousands of Haitians left homeless by the earthquake.

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Steve McAndrew
Red Cross FACT Relief team

Over the past decade, Steve McAndrew has responded to close to 50 disasters around the world. He arrives in Haiti on day 3 of the disaster to lead the Red Cross’ global relief distributions. His emergency response team is among the first relief workers to start distributing blankets, tarps, and cooking sets, but their supplies are limited to pre-positioned stock – goods held in country by the Haitian Red Cross.

In the first weeks of the Red Cross operation, getting enough supplies to distribute is the biggest challenge. After being closed for two days after the earthquake, the Port-au-Prince airport re-opens, but with so many NGOs responding to the disaster the Red Cross is competing for landing slots with over 100 agencies. Military food drops and the use of armed security in the first days of the response have set a disorderly tone for distributions, which make it difficult for organizations like the Red Cross to operate.

Committed to providing aid without guns, Steve’s team organizes local committees to help assess and distribute relief. Getting their message and goods across to the million plus Haitians in need is never easy.

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Gennike Mayers
FACT Information Officer

Haiti is Gennike’s first time responding to a natural disaster. As an information officer with the Red Cross national society in Trinidad, her day-to-day work deals with number and statistics; in Haiti, she’s seeing the human face of disaster for the first time.

As the FACT team’s information officer, Gennike’s job is to report on what’s happening in the field, so that donors can get the Red Cross perspective on the relief operation, and understand the priorities and challenges. On day 2 of the disaster, her first story is reporting on how the Haitian Red Cross is coping with the thousands injured in the earthquake. In a makeshift clinic, set up in the car park of a police station, Gennike is moved to try to help a pregnant woman who will die if she doesn’t receive medical treatment. Through out her mission Gennike comes face to face with people who need her assistance, forcing her to come to terms with not only her own limitations to provide help, but also the limitations of even large organizations like the Red Cross.

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Ian Heigh
Red Cross FACT ERU Logistics Coordinator

Ian Heigh leads the logistics Emergency Response Unit, the most critical component of the Red Cross mission in the early days of disaster. His job is to get specialized teams, life-saving equipment and relief supplies into the field — but the Haiti earthquake has a record number of complicating factors. The scale of the disaster, the number of people affected, a weak pre-existing infrastructure, and the location of the earthquake – an overcrowded capital city — makes Haiti one of the most challenging missions in Ian’s 20-year career.

His team must move tens of thousands of tons of supplies through a damaged airport, a destroyed port, and a city in ruins. Within two weeks, the Red Cross’ Haiti operation becomes the largest disaster response the organization has ever run in a single country. Twenty-one Emergency Response Units (ERUs) supplying healthcare, water, sanitation, relief and shelter are deployed to the field. With more than half of P-A-P flattened, Ian is also tasked with finding land and warehouses for a rapidly expanding operation.

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Hossam Elsharkawi
Red Cross FACT Emergency Field Hospital Coordinator

At age 4, Hossam Elsharkawi was medevaced out of war-torn Gaza by the Red Cross. As soon as he was old enough, he began volunteering in disaster zones.

A public health specialist, Hossam is in charge of establishing the Red Cross’ rapid deployment field hospital, an Emergency Response Unit (ERU) which he helped develop. It’s designed for easy transport and quick assembly – plug and play – and the Haiti earthquake is its first deployment. Hossam and his medical team are on the ground just four days after the quake, but logistical problems delay surgery. A damaged airport, blocked roads and downed communications are the recurring challenges in the early days of the operation.

With 20 years experience responding to some of the world’s worst disasters in over 30 countries, Hossam becomes the point person for organizing the dozen NGOs that set up around the general hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince.

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Louken Pluviose
Volunteer Paramedic

Louken Pluviose is a volunteer paramedic without any formal medical training in a camp called Juvenat. He is a natural healer who uses his rudimentary first-aid training to open a clinic. Starting with only gauze and a few aspirin and with the help of the Nicaraguan military he builds a first-class clinic for the community in his camp.

Louken’s dream is to win a scholarship to a medical school in Florida; it’s a dream he is avidly pursuing. His story is uplifting and inspirational.

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Magalie Landee
Haitian Entrepreneur

Magalie Landee is a 37-year-old, middle class entrepreneur who lost four of her five children, her business and her house in the earthquake. She lives on the street next to her destroyed home with her 11-year-old son, and her deeply depressed husband. Weeks go by and Magalie’s neighbourhood of Car Feuille, in the hills surrounding Port-au-Prince, receives very little assistance. A water truck comes regularly, but food is scarce for those who don’t have money. Magalie must rely on the goodwill of her neighbours to eat. She and her remaining family sleep on pieces of cardboard on the street in the open air. There is no privacy to wash or go to the bathroom.

Magalie is a strong woman, who built a thriving electronics business with the help of her family, but her resolve seems to have died along with her children. She says she doesn’t have the strength to start over. For Magalie just staying alive is a daily battle.

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Marcel Phevenun
Haitian Mechanic

Marcel can fix anything. He’s a mechanic by trade and a survivor at heart. None of Marcel’s family died in the earthquake, but he lost his home. Refusing to dwell on the past, Marcel immediately builds a shelter made of wood and sheet metal for he and his family in Champ de Mars; a 35,000-person camp opposite the destroyed National Palace.

To feed his family Marcel finds work fixing motorbikes and cars; he has never been dependent on aid and doesn’t want to start now. He is the leader of his large extended family: a wife, a son, eight siblings, and his mother. They all look to Marcel for answers, especially his mentally challenged brother, Romain. Romain dreams about going to the United States because he loves Obama and sees no future in Haiti. It is up to Marcel to balance the hopes and dreams of not only the loved ones around him, but himself.

Weeks after the earthquake the situation in Haiti remains dire, and Marcel is worried for his own future and the future of his country.

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