Faced with the need to provide 1,000 people in the mountainous region of Mornes with temporary shelters this week, Handicap International benefited from an extraordinary form of logistical support - heavy helicopters.
As part of an operation to transport aid to more than 1,000 people a few days ago, Handicap International used three high-tonnage helicopters and a team of a dozen people on the ground to transport 10 tonnes of equipment to an area inaccessible even to the six-wheel drive off-road trucks managed by our organisation. The focus of this operation – the isolated Mornes de Grand Goave area, to the west of Port-au-Prince - is located at an altitude of 1,200 metres. Populated mainly by rural communities engaged in subsistence farming, the Mornes de Grand Goave were among the areas of the island most severely affected by the earthquake on 12 January and its aftershocks.
The area's traditional homes did not stand up to the earthquake and hundreds were totally destroyed. There were, however, a limited number of victims. This was due to the light structure of the “cailles”, as the local houses are known, and the fact that most of the inhabitants were working in the fields at the time of the disaster.
The arrival of the rainy season in villages perched at high altitudes at the end of March meant that exceptional means had to be used to transport the shelters before the arrival of the violent tropical storms. A series of needs assessments performed jointly by Handicap International and Médecins du Monde enabled us to identify the priority sectors in a short space of time.
Winds of over 100 km/h
In these steep, craggy areas accessible only by foot after long hours of walking, it was impossible to transport aid by convention means. That's why Handicap International, with the support of the United Nations and the World Food Programme, launched a shelter and non food items distribution programme by helicopter. The village of Béraud was the first to benefit from this project. On 2nd and 3rd March, more than 1,000 people received shelters designed to resist winds of over 100 km per hour (known as 'shelter boxes') and plastic sheets. A ground team of around a dozen people and no fewer than three heavy helicopters, sometimes operating at their maximum capacity because of the unfavourable weather conditions in Béraud, were required to transport 10 tonnes of equipment.
A second wave of deliveries is currently being prepared and is set to take place over the next few days.
> More information about our response to the earthquake in Haiti
