Help for Haiti – Marco answers call for expertise

Three months after the earthquake struck, killing over 230,000 people, Italian Marco Ferloni, from Monza near Milan, is now back studying in Newcastle.

He says: “I was sitting at my computer in January, working at my dissertation when I got a Skype call from the emergency co-ordinator of Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), an international NGO based in Italy.  They were putting together an emergency response team to head off to Haiti and wanted to know if I was available.”

Marco had previously worked for COOPI for 14 years in Milan, Montenegro and Uganda and within 48 hours he met a colleague in Paris and they flew straight out to Santo Domingo – the nearest available airport as Port-au-Prince airport was closed to commercial traffic.

Marco says: “I have spent the last year studying for the Masters course in Disaster Management and Sustainable Development at Northumbria University in Newcastle but when the call came through, I was very tempted to say yes and go back into the field.  It was a real opportunity to put my theory and extensive experience into practice – and to have the chance to make a difference to the people in Haiti who had been devastated by the disaster.”

In Haiti, Marco was appointed as team leader and joined forces with colleagues from COOPI and RapidLA, a Peruvian organisation which specialises in search and rescue operations.

He says: “Haiti has one the largest UN military operations in the world and the country has been affected by an incredible mix of both natural and political ‘hazards’ such as hurricanes, coups, epidemics and internal conflicts in recent years.

“The result is that this last earthquake hit an already devastated society and the recovery will take many years.

Marco arrived in Haiti just days after the earthquake struck.  During the first week, he worked with two other colleagues to set up the office and identify the areas where they could provide the greatest support.  The team also made contact with local disaster agencies to help maximise their impact.

He says: “We were a new organisation to Haiti and needed to work with local people who knew the area and spoke the language.  As the offices of the main support agencies, such as the UN, had been destroyed by the earthquake, much of the co-ordination was being done from make-shift accommodation at the airport.  We had to co-ordinate our activity with the work being done by other aid agencies across 11 different clusters of activity and our project was part of the water and sanitation and clusters.”

With over 800,000 homeless people, Haiti now has over 300 new ‘settlements’ – areas where people whose homes have been destroyed by the earthquake have spontaneously come together to live in temporary accommodation.

Marco says: “The people whose homes had been destroyed used, blankets, sheets and curtains – anything they could - to provide temporary shelter and the first stage of our help was to provide additional water proof shelter.  We organised the distribution of essential supplies such as food rations, jerry cans, plastic sheets and camp beds, which were provided by the Italian Department of Civil Protection.”

Marco’s team began co-ordinating activity with various relief agencies, assessing the needs in different towns, liaising with relief workers via Skype and e-mail and identifying the new ‘settlements’ which would be covered by their work.  

He says: “There is a huge economic gap between the very rich and the very poor in Haiti and what really shocked me was that some of the people I talked to said, the basic emergency services being provided by the aid agencies were actually better than before the earthquake.  This was particularly shocking as the sheer scale of the devastation in Haiti meant in the first few days after the earthquake, it was impossible to achieve even the basic minimum standards of support which are set out internationally.”

Now, three months on, Marco’s team have helped over 4,000 families directly.  Phase one of their 18 month project plan is being clearly implemented - providing better living conditions for the internally displaced people (IDPs) with the provision of shelter, water, sanitation, waste management and hygiene facilities.

Marco says: “The scale of humanitarian aid needed in the aftermath of the earthquake was clear for everyone around the world to see and by co-ordinating their activity, the aid agencies have been able to make a real difference.

“However, it is inevitable that Haiti will face further natural hazards and the next phase of our project is to help them be better prepared in the future.  We need to reduce their risk and vulnerability and there are many things which can be done to make that possible.  For example, by building stronger houses which are less likely to collapse in an earthquake, less people would be killed or injured in the future.  

“It is the consequences of the earthquake, not just the earthquake itself, which causes much of the humanitarian crisis and that is what we must address to ensure Haiti is better prepared, more resilient and less vulnerable in the medium to longer term.”

Now Marco is back in the UK to complete his dissertation and has shared his experiences with Northumbria University’s Disaster and Development Centre (DDC), which has an international reputation for disaster management and sustainable development.

Dr Andrew Collins, Director of Northumbria’s DDC says: “This was an excellent opportunity for Marco to contribute to an international relief operation.  He had the opportunity to play a key role in co-ordinating the initial relief operation, but most importantly, has identified some of the risk reduction measures which could be implemented in Haiti to help the country in the future.  One of our priorities at the DDC is to look at the mechanisms which can be put in place in countries to help prepare them for disasters and reduce the devastation, and to aid long term recovery for individuals and communities alike.”