Little food and shelter for Haiti's survivors

Posted January 16, 2010 10:08:00

The United Nation's World Food Programme says two million survivors of the earthquake in Haiti will need food aid. But so far it has only managed to feed just a few thousand. Speaking at the US Colonel Ben McMullen says it's been a challenging exercise.

Source: AM | Duration: 3min 28sec

Topics: earthquake, haiti


BRENDAN TREMBATH: The United Nations World Food Programme says two million survivors of the earthquake in Haiti will need food aid but so far it has only managed to feed just a few thousand, as we've been hearing.

Some desperate people have helped themselves by looting a warehouse where the food is stored. But more aid is on the way from countries around the world.

North America correspondent Craig McMurtrie is at the airport in Haiti's capital and spoke to Colonel Ben McMullen from the US air command.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: Colonel what kind of logistics effort is going in here? It seemed that the airport was working at a frantic pace last night.

BEN MCMULLEN: The element that I'm working with is responsible for keeping the base open and allowing aeroplanes and aircraft to come in with whatever relief, aid supplies etc to help the Haitian people and the Government of Haiti to help the cause. That's our main effort right now.

Yesterday was frantic, there's no doubt about it. It always is on day one. Everybody in the international community is trying to help and so it got a little bit hectic.

We have put things in place to allow a little bit more control and orderly fashion into the airport for delivery and those processes are starting to take place and you're starting to see that it's not nearly as chaotic as it was yesterday.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: What happens next? What happens with the aid that's coming in?

BEN MCMULLEN: Again it's not really what we're here to do. It's a different element of the effort here. All the international aid agencies are here, including USAID is here. Their focus is to get that aid out into the community.

I can't really speak to that because it's not what we're doing. All we're doing is facilitating the delivery of the stuff to here - the equipment, supplies - and getting it to a place on the base, on the airfield that they can take into the community.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: One last question just relating to the security of this facility. There's some frustration out there on the streets as you would expect that the people feel they're not seeing enough aid yet.

I know it's a massive logistical effort but obviously securing this airport, this base is important. What if anything can you tell us about that and expectations in relation to that?

BEN MCMULLEN: Right you know obviously our first priority is protecting our folks as we do this effort. There's a lot of potential for unrest as we would expect. And people are going to come to the airport cause that's where they see things happening and we're hearing that that's actually going on.

We have multiple security elements in place to secure the airfield, probably in the neighbourhood of 150 or so folks - everything from security personnel to an army element that's also here.

They're going to all the hotspots and the locations that can be accessed on the airfield and providing orderly efforts to keep it calm down out there as folks are trying to get on the airfield; and as the airfield manager here is trying to make sure that those points are accessible to the community at the right level.

CRAIG MCMURTRIE: A danger of rioting?

BEN MCMULLEN: Certainly. I think in this case you know folks are upset out there. They've had no food or little food, little water over the last five, six, seven days. And we expect that as a worst case scenario. We're prepared to handle that as best we can.

But we've seen none of that right now. Our security forces are telling us that things are somewhat under control but at certain points it is getting a little bit hectic.

BRENDAN TREMBATH: Colonel Ben McMullen speaking to Craig McMurtrie at Port-au-Prince airport.