DUBAI // Telecommunications experts trained in disaster relief operations left Dubai for Haiti last night, assigned with re-establishing power and communications. Two members of the UN World Food Programme's (WFP) Fast IT and Telecommunications Emergency and Support Team (Fittest), Dane Novarlic and William Twyford, are expected to arrive in Haiti today with more than 400kg of equipment and more than a decade of disaster relief experience.
Their mission is to get a secure telecommunications network up and running again to facilitate aid work. The scale of the devastation caused by yesterday's 7.0-magnitude quake, which was centred south of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, is difficult to ascertain as phone lines and power supplies failed. Communications are near the top of the list of priorities to be able to direct aid to the most heavily damaged areas. The duo will meet up with Pierre Petry, a technician who was already in Haiti on a training assignment. All three will most likely stay in the area for at least a month and will carry out an assessment of any additional equipment or expertise needed from standby partners around the world.
Past experience of earthquakes in more developed countries leaves Mr Novarlic, 38, to expect "a mess". "From what we are seeing on the news, it looks as though we will be starting from scratch," he said. Mr Twyford, 35, who worked on a three month posting in Haiti last year, predicted that with fairly limited infrastructure and with the magnitude of the tremor, they face telecommunication problems on a national scale.
He expected "a lot of power lines down, damage to the general power infrastructure, damage to the telephone lines and cables in the streets". The team was alerted at about 3am Dubai time yesterday when Mr Petry contacted Greg Vanny, the head of Fittest, to inform him of the earthquake and that their sub-office was still standing and he was safe. "Then he sent a couple of pictures of the area," Mr Vanny said. "The first piece of information we wanted was that all WFP staff were accounted for - I believe they are all alive."
As the team became more aware of the night's events through news broadcasts, the WFP issued a request for assistance from Fittest. The men spent yesterday checking their "fly-away kits" in the WFP warehouse while the travel team tried to determine the best route to Haiti. They each took 210kg of equipment, including laptop computers, satellite phones, solar battery charging panels and radio equipment.
loatway@thenational.ae
