View From Haiti: Head of Save the Children Talks About the Relief Effort

Charles F. MacCormack, chief executive of Save the Children, traveled to Haiti on Sunday to track how much progress is being made in helping victims of the recent earthquake, and to check in on his staff members there.

Mr. MacCormack’s group, which has worked in Haiti since 1978, employed 160 people in the country before the disaster. One of its staff members was killed in the earthquake; others were injured and many lost family members.

Roughly half of the charity’s 59 staff members in Port-au-Prince are now back at work, distributing medical supplies and providing other aid to quake victims. The charity is also working outside Port-au-Prince – in Leogane and Jacmel – to set up play areas for children who’ve been made homeless by the earthquake, and to offer other assistance.

Save the Children has roughly 200 staff members now in Haiti.

In an interview, Mr. MacCormack talked about the relief operations, the impact of the disaster on his organization, and the challenges of rebuilding Haiti so it can become more stable and less impoverished than before the earthquake.

It’s been just over a week since the earthquake struck. What are the most pressing needs right now?

The immediate needs remain water, food, medicines, and sanitation. But in order to provide that, the needs are fuel and cash.

How big a problem is the shortage of fuel?

It’s still a problem. You can’t get food and medicine and water out to people if you don’t have some method for delivering it. And on the cash, it’s not so much donations, which have been very generous, but the banking system in Haiti. The whole economy is without Haitian currency. If you had a bank account, you can’t access it.

There have been reports of planes full of supplies not being able to land, and of aid trucks not getting to those who need it. Will there be more deaths in the days and weeks ahead because of the slow pace of aid?

Every day is better than the day before. We have daily discussions about how Save and others are doing. There’s no question that more is getting through now.

You’ve got a situation where, for all practical purposes, you have got 2 to 3 million people impacted and displaced and in need, and you’ve got one runway to get everything in. And you’ve got a road to Santo Domingo, which is not adequate to moving large vehicles over extended periods of time. That fact is obviously creating a bottleneck and that bottleneck has got to be widened.

What are some ideas for doing that?

They’re talking about an air bridge from Miami. They’re talking about getting the port open on an emergency basis, at least. They’re talking about utilizing other airports and other parts of Haiti. They’re talking about improvements to the roads.

We’re also hearing some reports of violence. Have Save the Children staff members experienced any violence or unrest as they deliver aid?

We have not. I was there over the weekend and I was struck by the stoicism of the hundreds of thousands of children and families who were out on the streets and in parking lots, wherever they could settle, with no food, water, sanitation, or shelter. From my point of view, it’s amazing that people aren’t more frustrated.

Do your employees have security staff protecting them when they deliver aid?

Not on the actual delivery. We have a security team who arranges where we would go. We work through existing community leaders and partners. Our experience has been that that is the best form of security. You don’t just appear and offload a truck of desperately-needed goods.

To that point about just showing up, have you seen examples of groups popping up that don’t have any experience doing relief work but want to capitalize on the attention and raise money?

I haven’t personally seen that. It’s obviously to some extent been a problem in the past. It’s more people who aren’t prepared or trained or experienced wanting to be helpful than that they’re trying to take advantage.

This is a situation where the relief community has been devastated. Facilities don’t exist. After the tsunami, we were the only NGO that had been in Aceh ahead of time. People would fly in from Taiwan or South Dakota. The government knew us, so they would send these people to us. And we ended up looking after 400 people and had to provide them with tents that needed to go out to the people of Aceh. We ended up with our own displaced person camp.

And Port-au-Prince is even worse, in the sense that there aren’t buildings or food. People might find their way there and walk through the airport and be out on the street, and what’s going to happen to them?

Aid groups like yours that worked in Haiti before the earthquake are victims as well. What’s been the impact of the quake on your operations and staff?

It’s enormous throughout the assistance community that was in Port-au-Prince and the affected area beforehand. Everyone has lost colleagues: the U.N., the U.S. Embassy, Save the Children, other NGOs. Everyone has family members that are missing, homes that are destroyed. I think a huge portion of the relief community that was on the ground are themselves displaced and disoriented.