The American Refugee Committee, a humanitarian organization based in Minneapolis, expects its first relief team to arrive at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the team was driving overland from Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, according to Monte Achenbach, one of two ARC workers already in Haiti.
The ARC team will deliver supplies -- including wheelchairs, surgical masks and body bags -- to a clinic staffed by Mayo Clinic medical students on the Dominican side of the border. An ARC health specialist will stay in the border area to help direct Haitians injured in last week's devastating earthquake to the clinic, Achenbach said.
Other team members will drive to the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince to rendezvous with Achenbach, ARC's senior program director, and Michael Barringer-Mills, an ARC field support worker. The two have lived in a tent on U.N. property since arriving in Haiti last Friday. ARC's team hopes to eventually deliver metal cans and tablets that can be used to decontaminate water in a city where a lack of drinking water contributes daily to deaths by dehydration, Achenbach said. ARC workers also will pass out plastic sheets for use as shelter.
"We're committed to getting things to the people who need them," he said. But, he added, "there has never been anything on this scale."
He spent part of Tuesday touring the Delmas area with the local mayor, trying to identify suitable distribution points for food, water and other essentials. He shared that intelligence with the United Nations, which he hopes will begin passing out supplies to Haitians "within a day or two."
The delay between the arrival of supplies and distribution has proved troublesome. While Achenbach has not seen any looting or serious violence among the hundreds of thousands of Haitians milling in the streets, he has witnessed a skirmish or two among people trying to get to water and food. He warns that anger and desperation could take over if widespread distributions don't begin soon.
Achenbach and Barringer-Mills get their water from a line at the U.N. compound and eat peanut butter crackers or rations. They beg for generator-driven electrical connections for computers wherever they can find them.
Achenbach, who once lived in Haiti, has managed to get around to assess needs. The main streets of Port-au-Prince are mostly clear, he said. But if he turns off the main roads, his driver must scale piles of rocks that used to be houses.
