Running on Empty

By Adam Koons, Director of Relief, International Relief and Development

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Trying to work here is something unimaginable to the “outside world.” It is being widely publicized that one of the very biggest challenges here in the Haiti disaster response is difficult coordination and poor infrastructure leading to difficult logistics. It for example reported that although the quantity of emergency goods being given to Haiti is enormous, the airport has a backlog of 1400 emergency airlift flights in line for permission to fly to an airport that can handle at most 150 flights a day.

But let’s take it down to the personal level. Today I had an important UN coordination group meeting to attend. Our office/house is in the same neighborhood. The meeting was about two miles away and in “normal times” it takes about 15 minutes. But first, before starting out, it took about an hour to find enough black-market fuel to make the trip. The trip took 50 minutes. Along the way we were exposed to people trying to defy physics. The vehicles were already moving in four lanes on a two-lane road. We were inching along on the sidewalk up against the buildings. Then a UN convoy appeared some distance behind and a UN soldier walked up through the traffic ordering vehicles to move over. The only place for us to move over would be actually inside of a building. So we ignored the UN command. But this is par for the course. Along the way we passed a supermarket that had completely collapsed and the ruins were filled with people climbing around trying to see into and reach into the rubble.

Upon return to our house we found that there was, as usual, no electricity. And the bank of backup batteries were dead. The generator that would normally charge the batteries and provide electricity in absence of a public power grid was not able to run. No fuel. So we used the batteries in our laptop computers and blackberries. Until those batteries died. Then we just tried to do whatever we could do on paper. Three hours later a few gallons of fuel were finally found to start the generator. Now the seven of us can get back to work, and try to share the single internet line we have. I now have 700 emails to deal with. But I will use my precious little time on line to download the dozens of critically important attached files to my hard drive……………and to send this short note (which I first composed off-line).