PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - John Travolta has flown a jetliner carrying relief supplies into the Haitian capital, along with doctors and ministers from the Church of Scientology.

The 55-year-old actor piloted his own Boeing 707 from Florida with six tons of ready-to-eat military rations and medical supplies for survivors of Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake late Monday.

His wife, Kelly Preston, was also aboard.

“We have the ability to actually help make a difference in the situation in Haiti and I just can’t see not using this plane to help,” Travolta said.

Travolta compared the mission to aid efforts following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. “We were there right away, with this airplane, because you know we have the ability and the means to do this so I think you have responsibility on some level to do that.”

Aid groups have been desperate to fly their own planes into the over-stressed airport. U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said Tuesday that at least 800 planes with relief items are on a waiting list for the airport, which can handle only about 130 flights a day due to a lack of space to park planes as they unload.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders has complained that the flight scheduling priorities of U.S. military controllers running the airport delayed the arrival of field hospitals, resulting in some deaths.

More than 150,000 people have already been buried since the magnitude-7 quake, which destroyed entire Port-au-Prince neighborhoods and landmarks and crumbled nearby towns.

Hundreds of thousands of people are living in the streets, with scores of injured wanting for proper medical care.

Travolta and Preston returned to Florida as soon as their supplies and passengers were unloaded.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): THELATESTNEWS

No question, the two church-goers from New Jersey had the best intentions in the world when they arrived in Port-au-Prince this week to help victims of Haiti’s killer earthquake.

Trouble was, that was all they had in a land where food, water, shelter and transportation are at a desperate premium, said Laura Blank, a disaster communications manager on the ground for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian aid group with long ties to the country.

“They seemed very eager and very passionate about helping the people of Haiti, but they didn’t have a ride to get out of the airport,” said Blank, who had to direct the pair to assistance.

More than a week after a magnitude-7 earthquake devastated the country, disaster organizers say they’re seeing the first signs of a problem that can hinder even the most ambitious recovery efforts: good intentions gone wrong.

From volunteer medical teams who show up uninvited, to stateside donors who ship boxes of unusable household goods, misdirected compassion can actually tax scarce resources, costing time, money, energy — and lives, experts say.

“Everyone wants to be a hero. Everyone wants to help,” said Dr. Thomas Kirsch, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. “It’s not the way to do it.”

Even a medical crew from his own school — Kirsch declined to identify them — arrived in Haiti so ill-prepared they had to seek sustenance from non-governmental organizations.

“They had no bedding, supplies or food,” he said. “They ended up glomming onto some of the NGOs.”

Volunteers simply show up
What to do with well-meaning volunteers is not a new problem. In every disaster, large numbers of people simply show up to help. A handbook published by California disaster officials estimates organizers can count on 50,000 “convergent” volunteers after any severe earthquake. After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, more than 40,000 unsolicited volunteers arrived at Ground Zero in New York.

In the U.S. and around the world, aid organizations are walking a fine line, trying to encourage skilled professionals who can provide indispensable assistance — and waving off those who might not be

up to the task. At the federal Center for International Disaster Information, a stern note warns the well-intentioned:

“Volunteers without prior disaster relief experience are generally not selected for relief assignments,” it reads. “Most offers of another body to drive trucks, set up tents, and feed children are not accepted.”

It’s an effort to help would-be Samaritans recognize the reality of the situation, said CIDI director Suzanne H. Brooks.

“It’s very romantic in the TV and movies,” she said. “They think it’s flying in for a weekend. They need to think of it in terms of months.”

Those best suited to help are probably already there, experts said. They’re trained crews who not only have experience working in disasters, but also in developing nations, Kirsch said. The best teams also have a command of Haitian Creole and French, if possible.

When teams arrive without those skills and without their own supplies, they drain resources that could better be used for actual victims, said Dr. Kristi L. Koenig, an emergency physician at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in disaster response.

“Unless you’re part of a team before the disaster happens with a formal mission, you’re going to be part of the problem,” she said.

Even worse, certain volunteers have required emergency intervention themselves, Kirsch noted.

“Most people do quite well, but about 10 percent don’t,” he said. “They end up totally freaking out and having to be evacuated.”

Winter coats and high-heeled shoes?
A different but equally pressing problem is the flood of ill-advised donations that aid agencies already are facing, organizers said. A handful of “Help Haiti” food and clothing drives across the country are inspiring cringes among some workers, said Diana Rothe-Smith, executive director of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, a coalition of agencies.

“I would strongly recommend that no donation drives be conducted unless there’s an existing organization on the ground, in Haiti, that has asked for the help,” Rothe-Smith said. “It does pile up very quickly.”

Donations of old clothes, canned goods, water and outdated prescriptions are accumulating, said Brooks. While such items sound useful, they’re actually expensive to sort, to transport and to distribute, she said. Cast-off drugs can be dangerous.

Oftentimes, the household items donated are simply not useful to the disaster victims they’re intended to help.

“I guarantee you someone is going to send a winter coat or high-heeled shoes,” Brooks said.

In fact, after the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, aid organizers in Sri Lanka were forced to deal with donations of stiletto shoes, expired cans of salmon, evening gowns and even thong panties, according to news reports. In Florida, a truckload of mink coats showed up during the 2004 hurricane season, Rothe-Smith said, a likely tax write-off for a retailer having trouble pushing furs.

The compassion behind some donations is understandable — and laudable, she added. People see dire images on television or in news reports and they want to help.

“It seems to make logical sense to go through your own cupboard and gather those items,” Rothe-Smith said.

The reality, however, is that inappropriate donations actually do more harm than good.

“If you buy a can of peas and it costs 59 cents, it’ll cost about $80 to get it where it needs to go,” Rothe-Smith said.

Mathematics of donation favor cash
Many agencies try to motivate donors with the mathematics of the situation. Jeff Nene, a spokesman for Convoy of Hope, a Springfield, Mo., agency that feeds 11,000 children a day in Haiti, urges cash donations that allow his group to buy in bulk from large suppliers and retailers.

“When people give $1, it translates into $7 in the field,” he said. “If they spend $5 for bottled water, that’s nice and it makes them feel good, but probably it costs us more than $5 to send it. If they give us $5, we can get $35 worth of water.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by virtually every aid agency.

“I would really say at this point, honestly, right now, money is the best thing to give,” Rothe-Smith said.

Donors can find vetted agencies helping in Haiti on sites such as Charity Navigator.

Still, trying to direct the flood of compassion can be tricky, Nene acknowledged.

“Some people get a little miffed by it. They think they’re trying to help and when you don’t receive it in that attitude and spirit, they get upset,” he said.

“You just have to tread lightly. You don’t want to crush people when they’re so willing to help.”

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): MSNBC

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Some of the dead in this shattered city line the roads, carefully placed garments shrouding their faces. Others are carried into the hills for quick burials. Hundreds are arrayed in a macabre tangle of limbs outside a morgue, just feet from the grievously wounded.

The living and the dead here share the same space — the sidewalks, the public plazas, the hospitals. The living are frightened of being inside in case another earthquake hits; the dead are everywhere.

On the doorstep of a pharmacy, six bodies were lined up shoulder to shoulder. On the body of one woman, covered in a sheet, rested a small bundle, the tiny leg of an infant sticking out of the wrap.

“It’s beyond description. The disaster, the damage, is just so overwhelming,” said Karel Zelenka, a Catholic Relief Services representative in Haiti. “Everyone has a scarf or something, because the smell is unbearable. … You literally have bodies all over the place.”

The international Red Cross estimates up to 50,000 people were killed in Tuesday’s earthquake. For now, few know what to do with the bodies. People say they’re being left on roadsides and doorsteps so relatives who may have survived can find them, or for families to find transportation for burials.

‘Highest regard to families’
Some families wouldn’t wait. Relatives of one woman who was killed in the earthquake dug her grave about 20 feet from the road, her body wrapped in a sheet and strapped to a door. Across the street, others dug graves and built a bonfire to keep away flies and ward off the stench.

While the odor can be overpowering, health officials sought to dispel worries about the spread of disease. Pan American Health Organization officials — speaking from Washington — stressed dead bodies are not a significant contagion danger, and cautioned against rapid mass burials or cremations.

“The management of dead bodies needs to be done with the highest regard to families, their wishes and their sensitivities,” said Dr. Jon Kim Andrus, deputy director for the Pan American Health Organization.

In front of the morgue at the Hospital General downtown, family members come to stare over hundreds of bodies covering the parking lot. A woman described the clothes of her daughter to city workers, who moved a sheet to look closely at a body. The smell of death was so strong that everybody not wearing a mask held their hands to their faces.

Nearby, the injured sit on makeshift beds, awaiting medical assistance. The living and the piles of dead are only separated by about 20 feet.

As relief organizations struggle to get supplies and aid to the survivors, few plans were being made for the dead. The international Red Cross said it would ship 3,000 body bags along with tons of aid being sent from Geneva on Thursday night.

Voodoo rituals for the dead
Meanwhile, Brazil army officials issued a statement saying many followers of the Voodoo religion would not accept the dead being touched until all of their rituals were concluded. Some experts on the faith validated the claim while others rejected it.

Voodoo, a mix of African religions and Roman Catholicism, is central to Haitian life and is widely observed in some form. The religion often has been wrongly associated with black magic or sorcery, leaving a lingering stereotype against its followers.

But suggestions that survivors are stacking corpses outside Port-au-Prince hospitals because they are waiting for a Voodoo ceremony is inaccurate, said Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, an expert on Haitian Voodoo, also spelled Vodou, in the department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

“None of what the Brazilian authorities say makes any sense,” Bellegarde-Smith said in a Thursday e-mail. “They are absolutely wrong! Most Haitians, though they believe in Vodou, are devoted Catholics or Protestants.”

Bob Corbett, professor emeritus of philosophy at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, said most Haitians would certainly want a Voodoo priest or priestess to be at a burial ceremony.

“Relatives would want some consolation, some guidance and ritual,” he said from his St. Louis home. “But it’s clear there is a huge public health problem there with all the bodies, so it’s hard to say what people would prefer in this situation.”

Late Thursday afternoon, the sunset mingled with the concrete dust from the crumbled buildings, tinging the city in a golden mist.

On a patch of dirt on a busy street corner a woman took her last breath. She was 26. Her family said she had been injured in the quake and suffered for two days.

Her family and about two dozen passers-by crowded around. They said a prayer and gently wiped the corners of her mouth before closing her eyes and covering her with a blanket.

Her father sat at the woman’s feet. Like the rest of those in the crowd, he didn’t cry. He sat, visibly drained, seemingly distant. When a journalist asked his daughter’s name, he just shook his head.

Source (article):MSNBC

Source (picture):MEDIA.MASSLIVE.COM, TELEGRAPH.CO.UK, MASHABLE