notes: SOURCE: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4474&cat=field-news Petionville Golf Club camp: An MSF clinic offers basic health care and ante-natal care, rehabilitation (in collaboration with Handicap International), referral services, routine vaccination, and psycho-social counseling in the camp, where an estimated 45,000 people are living. About 150 consultations are provided every day. -------------------------------------------------------- SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596 ----------------------------------------------------------- ARTICLE DATED 1/25/10: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." =========== J/P HRO (Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization) - "CTU - CHOLERA REHYDRATION CENTER" (SHELTER/MEDICAL CLINIC/SCHOOL) http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5390 -> SOURCE: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4474&cat=field-news Petionville Golf Club camp: An MSF clinic offers basic health care and ante-natal care, rehabilitation (in collaboration with Handicap International), referral services, routine vaccination, and psycho-social counseling in the camp, where an estimated 45,000 people are living. About 150 consultations are provided every day. -------------------------------------------------------- SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5390 ----------------------------------------------------------- ARTICLE DATED 1/25/10: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." =========== J/P HRO (Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization) - "CTU - CHOLERA REHYDRATION CENTER" (SHELTER/MEDICAL CLINIC/SCHOOL) http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5390
other_contacts changed.

notes: SOURCE: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4474&cat=field-news Petionville Golf Club camp: An MSF clinic offers basic health care and ante-natal care, rehabilitation (in collaboration with Handicap International), referral services, routine vaccination, and psycho-social counseling in the camp, where an estimated 45,000 people are living. About 150 consultations are provided every day. -------------------------------------------------------- SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596 ----------------------------------------------------------- ARTICLE DATED 1/25/10: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." -> SOURCE: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4474&cat=field-news Petionville Golf Club camp: An MSF clinic offers basic health care and ante-natal care, rehabilitation (in collaboration with Handicap International), referral services, routine vaccination, and psycho-social counseling in the camp, where an estimated 45,000 people are living. About 150 consultations are provided every day. -------------------------------------------------------- SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596 ----------------------------------------------------------- ARTICLE DATED 1/25/10: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." =========== J/P HRO (Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization) - "CTU - CHOLERA REHYDRATION CENTER" (SHELTER/MEDICAL CLINIC/SCHOOL) http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5390
other_contacts changed.

parish: -> Port-au-Prince
town: Petionville, Port-au-Prince -> Petionville
name: Petionville Club Golf Course - LZ / 82nd Airborne Distributing - 2010 Haiti Earthquake (SHELTER, FEEDING SITE OPEN) -> Petionville Club Golf Course - 2010 Haiti Earthquake (Supported by J/P HRO)
address: Delma 40B on hill near -> Delmas 40B
notes: SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596 ----------------------------------------------------------- ARTICLE DATED 1/25/10: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." -> SOURCE: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=4474&cat=field-news Petionville Golf Club camp: An MSF clinic offers basic health care and ante-natal care, rehabilitation (in collaboration with Handicap International), referral services, routine vaccination, and psycho-social counseling in the camp, where an estimated 45,000 people are living. About 150 consultations are provided every day. -------------------------------------------------------- SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596 ----------------------------------------------------------- ARTICLE DATED 1/25/10: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course."
region: Haiti, Caribbean -> Quest

facility_type: Walk-in Resource -> Shelter

notes: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." -> SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596 ----------------------------------------------------------- ARTICLE DATED 1/25/10: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course."
cat_notes: SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596 ->

cat_notes: -> SEE ALSO SEAN PENN's - J/P Haitian Relief Organization a clinic at the encampment of earthquake-displaced people at the Petionville Golf Club, which Penn's newly formed aid agency J/P Haitian Relief Organization has been helping to manage. http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/shelters/show/5596

notes: http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." -> http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0125/1224263036790.html Fear of riots as tonnes of food lie awaiting distribution ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course."

town: Port-au-Prince -> Petionville, Port-au-Prince

name: Petionville Club Golf Course (SHELTER, FEEDING SITE OPEN) -> Petionville Club Golf Course - LZ / 82nd Airborne Distributing - 2010 Haiti Earthquake (SHELTER, FEEDING SITE OPEN)
notes: NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course." -> http://www.demotix.com/news/225371/82nd-airborne-lz-food-distribution-center-haiti 1/21/10: 82nd Airborne, distributing food that has 5,000 calories – enough for one day’s worth of food/water. Additional images show UN soldiers protecting German and Hungarian rescue teams as they enter Leogane on the 18th January. Petionville Golf Club, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The LZ is at the top of a hill. Haitians must wait in long lines and climb up the steep hillside to enter into one entrance, grab one food meal/packet than return down the hill. Most haven’t eaten for days, and they have to climb up in brutal heat – it is very punishing on their bodies. ------------------------------------------------------------- NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course."
areas_served: -> Petionville, Haiti

town: on hill near Port-au-Prince -> Port-au-Prince
address: Delma 40B -> Delma 40B on hill near
region: -> Haiti, Caribbean

town: -> on hill near Port-au-Prince
address: -> Delma 40B

notes: NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. -> NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Plush+Haitian+golf+club+houses+refugees/2459040/story.html Plush Haitian golf club houses 50,000 refugees By Andrew Cawthorne, ReutersJanuary 19, 2010 A family relaxes in their new home at the Petionville Club in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Jan. 18, 2009. The U.S. Army is distributing food and water at the tent city.Photograph by: Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel/MCTPORT-AU-PRINCE - Elite U.S. soldiers lie exhausted on tennis courts and beside a pool. Fifty thousand homeless people cram the nine-hole golf course. Helicopters land every half an hour with crates of water and food aid. The prestigious Club Petionville, on a hill in spacious grounds overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean sea beyond, has been transformed into probably the biggest refugee camp in Haiti after last week's catastrophic earthquake. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere but its elite came to the country club's elegant stone headquarters to dine and mingle with foreign diplomats and businessmen. Now the club houses commanders from the U.S. military's crack 82nd Airborne Division. Down the lawns and beyond a loose military cordon, the golf course is covered with tents, made from poles and sheets by people who flocked onto the club's grounds after the earthquake brought down its perimeter walls, as well as their homes. The club, named for former Haitian President Alexandre Petion, largely escaped damage, save a few broken pillars. "The days are long but it is good to help," said Staff Sergeant Michael Watson, a veteran of the U.S. military's response to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. "Katrina was bad but this is a lot bigger." The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti last week has killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people, according to the government, and left several million on the street. Unlike chaotic scenes elsewhere, with refugees fighting and scrambling for water and food, an orderly queue winds up the lawns of the club. Each refugee is allowed two bottles of water and one Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) ration. "If they get unruly, we just sit down," said Captain John Hartsock. "It has only happened twice. They get the message. "We don't want everyone going nuts, like the scene in 'Black Hawk Down' from Somalia." FROM IRAQ TO HAITI Hartsock, who has served three times in Iraq, said it was easier to deliver humanitarian aid in Haiti because there was not the same risk of attack. Instead of the razor-wire common in Iraq, a line of white swimming pool chairs is the only barrier between the soldiers and the refugees. "We want to avoid the military look," Hartsock said. The mass of flimsy tents and thousands of people lying on the grass give the appearance of a traditional refugee camp but a closer look reveals differences, perhaps reflecting the better-off social milieu of areas near the club. Many of the refugees are comfortably trilingual: Creole, French and English. The occupants of two or three tents even had solar panels outside, charging up some mobile phones. Rony Florial normally teaches tennis at the club. Now he is helping to organize refugee lines, while off-duty soldiers catch some sleep on the tennis courts. Other soldiers await their next shift around the pool, lounging on deckchairs in full uniform, with spectacular views over the city and hills beyond. "We are all doing what we can to help," Florial said. "The owners have closed the club and allowed the Americans to take over. It is for the national interest." Since Saturday, U.S. soldiers have attended the refugees from sunrise to sundown at the Petionville Club. On Monday, they gave out an estimated 20,000 bottles of water. Refugee leaders, however, say many needs are unattended. With the golf course on a high slope, the temperatures have dropped fast at night, and that has killed various children. "We need blankets, we need toilets, we need help for the children who have lost their parents," organizer Michel Ovilus said. "And we need houses. These people do not want to spend the rest of their life on a golf course."

notes: -> NPR, Jan 19, 2010: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122734169&ft=1&f=1004 A shipment of food from Catholic Relief Services was distributed Tuesday in Haiti at a makeshift camp in the Petionville Club Golf Course, near Port-au-Prince. Lane Hartill, the group's regional information officer, says the U.S. military's presence is making the distribution effort easlier, but people are still desperate. NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/americas/19aid.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Aid Arrives but Few Are Lucky to Get It By RAY RIVERA Published: January 18, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When the aid helicopters descend on the Pétionville Club golf course, once a playground for the wealthy and now a sprawling city of makeshift tents, the residents hurry toward them. But to get there, they must climb a steep embankment to a landing zone on top of a hill where the 82nd Airborne Division distributes the food and water. He arrived in the morning but made it only halfway up the hill, where into the late afternoon he was lying on the ground next to his cane. A woman had given him one of the two bottles of water she had gotten from the Americans, but he said he had gotten no food. “I cannot make it up,” he says. Even as more aid flows into Haiti nearly a week after a devastating earthquake, the challenges faced by the 82nd Airborne in handing out food and water here illustrate the hurdles in distributing it across the city. Roads are clogged with traffic and rubble. Confusion is rampant. Everywhere, people ask, “Where do I go?” People lucky enough to have learned about the food drop zone at the top of this golf course in the city’s Bourdon neighborhood, where tens of thousands of people now live, still face difficulties getting to it. The elderly get priority, but some of them cannot make it up. Families with young children also have priority, so some people are said to have borrowed babies and hauled them up the hill. Others wait near the landing zone for hours in the blazing sun, using cardboard boxes to shield their faces from the stinging dust and dry grass whipped up every time a helicopter lands. “I guess the people down there have dubbed this ‘the hill,’ ” said Lt. Jeff Wozencraft, 24, of Mannford, Okla. “It’s desperate. We’re doing everything we can.” Since members of the 82nd Airborne, from Fort Bragg, N.C., began distributing food on Saturday, their delivery method has evolved. On the first day they wore rifles slung around their backs. By Monday, they had ditched the rifles and were trying to present themselves more as aid workers than as soldiers. They set up a first aid station because many people coming up had untreated cuts and injuries. They have also ventured into the camp below to find people who can act as community leaders to help organize distribution in the far reaches of the hilly, nine-hole golf course. And they had to stop serving only at the front of the line, because the whole concept of a line was not working here. “We found people at the back of the line weren’t getting anywhere and never getting any food,” said Capt. John Hartstock of Vinton, Va. “Now we’re taking 10 at a time from different sections. It’s the best way, we’ve found.” “It’s been a learning process,” he added. Another failure: stamping the fingers of people who receive aid to prevent repeat customers who might sell the extra goods and deprive others who need them. People just washed the ink off. The food supplies are packaged Meals Ready to Eat, similar to the rations the military uses in the field. The Navy flies them to the landing zone from the aircraft every half-hour or so, dropping off dozens of 21-pound boxes. They start at 7:30 in the morning and stop at 6:30 as night falls, so people will not be on the dark hillside at night and because the small grass plateau that serves as a landing zone is unsafe for helicopters at night. Captain Hartstock said they handed out 3,000 meals on Monday and 10,000 bottles of water. But they estimate there are more than 25,000 people living on the golf course. A look at the rolling hills of tents and blankets and tarps held up by sticks suggests that estimate may be conservative. Down below, people are grateful for the food, and finding other ways to survive. Impromptu markets have sprung up, but many with limited food at inflated prices. Once the food is gone, the boxes have second lives as bed mats and roofs. Children use the cardboard to slide down the hills. Quikni Alakasis, 21, was lucky. She has a 4-month-old baby. She marched up the hill and was called to the front right away. “Because of the baby,” she said. “That’s why they gave me the food.” Ms. Alakasis lost her home in the earthquake and does not know how long she will live on this golf course. For now, she just waits for the helicopters.