Lending a helping hand

DOUG MCCLYMONT

Italy and New Zealand are both a long way from Haiti, but here in Brindisi in Italy, the plight of the million-plus Haitians is very close to our daily life as it is here that the United Nations have their logistics base for the world.

It is from here, by sea and by air, that the UN mission in Haiti is being supplied and supported, with portable offices and ablution blocks, with office supplies and expertise.

But why southern Italy?

Looking at the world map, it becomes obvious that down here we are extremely well placed to service all of the UN missions, in Africa and the Balkans especially, but also almost all of their others too, except for our New Zealand neighbours East Timor, and now of course the most needy, Haiti.

Within hours of the earthquake, Brindisi was working overtime, planning to rebuild the mission in Haiti, planning to replace traumatised friends and colleagues and those killed and missing, and to repair the infrastructure of Port au Prince.

While the UN does have ships and aeroplanes of its own, the space required to move everything to the Caribbean is huge.

The first ship available did not leave Brindisi until three weeks after the quake.

However, one of the largest cargo planes in the world, the Antonov 124-100, was available and at the end of the second week after the quake this plane had already completed five trips to the devastated island, with more to come.

On the day I watched it being loaded, there was a line of containers on the tarmac, comprising six self-contained ablution blocks with three toilets, two showers, and a wash basin each. The others making up a 100-man kitchen.

The plane sat on the tarmac, 10 wheels on each side under the fuselage and four under the nose, with the rear open and a container truck backed up under the tail. A gantry rolled out from within the cavern of the fuselage, picked up the container and moved it into storage.

A quick look determined that there was room for at least two containers side by side and with a length in excess of 36m there was certainly plenty of room for all the ablution blocks plus more.

At the other end, the plane will "kneel" and the containers will come out from the nose in the order they went in.

However, the facilities at the other end are minimal and unloading this monster will take all day, during which time the airport will be closed to all other traffic. So when you read of the delays in getting aid to this poverty stricken nation, think of a 400 tonne aircraft holding up traffic for a day, while a dozen others queue for their turn.

The range of this monster is determined by the payload, and while it is capable of carrying 150 tonnes, it is the volume of the cargo space that determines the load, and thus the operating range.

For the trip to Santo Domingo, the off-loading port in Dominican Republic, the ablution blocks weighed only 40 tonnes and the trip was a single hop.

The previous flight weighed in at 80 tonnes and the plane touched down for refuelling in the Azores as at that loading the range is only 8000km.

The cost of this operation? Immense.

In discussion with the loading chief, numbers were carefully avoided but he did say that a single flight cost approximately the same as the sea transport, the difference of course being that the plane was providing support within days at under 100 tonnes a trip, while the ship will deliver thousands of tonnes.

Living in this UNLB environment, the earthquake has become personal.

The children of UN personnel almost without exception attend our small international school. There are only about 30 of them and among those, six dads have gone off to Haiti for an indeterminate period.

On the third day after the quake the school put together a giant sympathy card delivered to the UN base to express the sadness of the children and staff at the loss of life of so many UN personnel in Haiti, friends and colleagues and countrymen.

Almost all of the support staff who have gone are men; their wives have stayed in Brindisi to maintain homes and children, and for almost all, English is a second language, and Italian third. They are anxious, and lost.

The school then has become a place of refuge for many, and every day one or more UN wives can be found helping out in a maths class, the preschool, or on lunch duty in the playground. In this environment at least there are children who speak their first language as well as English and so communication becomes less stressful.

It is not easy for these people, and certainly a new experience to be part of a support role that very few New Zealand schools have ever undertaken.

But spare a thought for the workers, too. Kiwi Bruce Larsen was one of the first to leave, a satellite engineer whose work description of course is "coms".

The earthquake is over, he works for a multi-national, the UN, but Bruce left Brindisi with a tent and personal rations in his backpack, as they are sleeping on the hard ground, there is no guarantee of food supply and until this lot gets there, no showers or toilets.

Their mates back in Italy have all contributed cash to the World Food Programme, and the enormity of the logistics of this disaster is reflected in the purchase of all the tents in all the stores within 100km of Brindisi.

The food to feed these men will come after the toilets and showers and satellite dishes.

» Doug McClymont is a former Southlander living and working in Italy.

- © Fairfax NZ News