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A group of highly skilled emergency
management workers from Johannesburg is in Port au Prince helping international
relief efforts in search and rescue operations.
JOBURG emergency management services (EMS)
staff have been sent to Port au Prince, the Haitian capital, to help in
"whatever way possible" in the devastated island nation.
The City's emergency relief teams have experience in helping out where disasters strike
Haiti was hit by an earthquake that measured
7.0 on the Richter scale, on Tuesday, 12 January. Thousands of people are
expected to have died, with many more injured.
Four members of the EMS left for Haiti
two days later, on 14 January. Leon Wiering, Rapulana Monageng, Connor Hartnady
and Lucas Kekana have been assigned as part of a 40-member team at Rescue SA, a
non-profit outfit.
The medical professionals' skills and
training include urban search and rescue, which involves the location,
extrication and initial medical stabilisation of victims trapped in confined
spaces. They can also administer advanced life support, which entails assessing a patient's
condition, administering drugs, defibrillating and providing advanced
airway management before the patient is taken to hospital.
According to reports from international media, the
death toll stands at more than 50 000 people while over 250 000 are injured.
Percy Morokane, the Joburg EMS
spokesperson, sympathised with his department's foreign counterparts. "The
members of the EMS who have been deployed are ... part of the [international] team
and [are using] their expertise by assisting in every way," he said.
Search
and rescue teams from the United States are leading operations with support
from countries including the United Kingdom and China.
Sue
van der Merwe, the deputy minister in the Department of International Relations
and Co-operation, spoke about the rescue package for Haiti. "The South African government has decided that the
country's aid assistance in Haiti will be approached in three phases."
The
first phase was the dispatching of medical professionals, forming part of
Rescue
SA. The second was activities such as the identification of bodies for which
the government would send forensic pathologists. The final phase would consist
of humanitarian aid. The government would work with non-governmental
organisations such as Gift of the Givers to provide humanitarian help.
Rescue SA, though, in its first phase of the
support programme, is faced with tough conditions. According to international
reports, there is no digging machinery or equipment to extract people trapped
in the rubble.
Jurgens Dyssel, the fire manager at the National
Disaster Management Centre, said the team continued to do its best. "They
haven't recovered any live bodies under the rubble yet, but the text messages
we've received from them so far indicate that the team is in good spirits."
He said despite the setbacks they were facing they
had enough experience from which to draw. "This is a team of experienced search
and rescue workers ... some of them were involved in previous disasters,
including the earthquakes in Algeria and Pakistan."
On
Friday, the former president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said he was
grateful for the support that South Africa had shown the country. Aristide
lives in exile, in Pretoria.
"The concrete action undertaken by Rescue South Africa and Gift of the Givers is a clear expression of ubuntu," he said. "We thank all the true friends of Haiti,
in particular the government and the people of South Africa for their
solidarity with the victims of Haiti."
Van
der Merwe said the government was appealing to all South Africans who were
willing and able to provide assistance in the form of aid or any other
assistance to Haiti, to help.
George Kilian, the head of the National Disaster Management
Centre, can be contacted on 012 334 0667 during office hours or email
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to make donations.
Rescue SA is supported by the departments of International Relations and Co-operation and Health in
partnership with Vodacom, Netcare and Discovery.
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