Having delivered essential supplies at Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, the ship and her crew are now hard at work redistributing World Food Programme (WFP) food and commodities to Haitian communities who have been logistically cut off from the rest of the island in the aftermath of the quake.
Anse-à-Veau, in Nippes province on Haiti's southern peninsula, has been swollen by refugees from Port-au-Prince.
With the roads impassable due to mudslides and flooding, the only way to get aid through to the the area has been by occasional air drops.
RFA Largs Bay and its crew were recently tasked by the WFP to deliver Anse-à-Veau's first major relief package since the earthquake.
Captain Ian Johnson, Commanding Officer of RFA Largs Bay, said "Anse-à-Veau is the second redistribution task that we've had, and perhaps it's the most important. You witness a village with about two to three thousand people who are desperately short of food. And this village is also serving a hinterland of about 20,000 people.
"The roads have been cut off for some weeks now, with mudslides and flooding, so this is the first real aid that we've managed to get into this area. Naturally we've got a lot of volunteers, very eager to help, to get this food ashore."
The ship's landing craft, its high-capacity sea raft, or Mexeflote, and unique capabilities have made it ideal for operations of this kind and, in the deep waters surrounding Haiti, dynamic positioning allows RFA Largs Bay to maintain a static position off the coast where other vessels would not be able to anchor. Captain Johnson explained further:
"We can hold our position in the same relative position just using the thrusters. They're all automated to onboard computation. So that can hold the ship in a fixed position.
"We then ballast the ship down - we've got a dock at the back end, and it's within that dock that we load the Mexeflote, and indeed any other craft, to bring that food aid ashore."
"RFA Largs Bay is about a mile [1.6km] off the coast at the moment in a dynamic positioning role, in some very deep water," he added.
"We've managed to load the Mexeflote from inside of the ship while we've been docked down. So, pretty much, we're a one-stop ship, and we've managed to do all of this by ourselves with a very competent and capable ship's company and embarked military force."
WFP Project Manager, Jonathan Thompson, accompanied RFA Largs Bay to deliver its cargo "We're bringing in MREs which are 'Meals Ready-to-Eat', which is a complete meal in one package for one person," he said. "We're also bringing rice, oil and some other commodities."
"The food that we've brought is for distribution throughout the entire northern area of Nippes province ... It's going to be distributed up into the hills, down the coastline, and in the general area of Anse-à-Veau."
He said that RFA Largs Bay was well-suited to supporting the work of the WFP on Haiti "The RFA has some substantial assets we can put into play to deliver food - things like the Mexeflote, the landing craft, the Largs Bay itself; they are ideal for distributing food along the coastline into shallow regions that are normally very difficult to access."
Helping to coordinate the effort at the harbour, Anse-à-Veau's parish leader Father David Fontaine welcomed the arrival of aid for his community:
"After the earthquake, a lot of people came out of Port-au-Prince to come here. For two months after the earthquake we didn't have help ... food - all was concentrated in Port-au-Prince," he explained.
Father Fontaine said that the people had been very poor before the disaster struck, and they had arrived in Anse-à-Veau with nothing. He explained that the people understood that they could not allow themselves to depend on the aid packages, but this, the first aid they have received since the earthquake, was much needed.
During the four-day relief operation at the village, RFA Largs Bay's Mexeflote raft shuttled 275,000 ready meals, 30 tonnes of rice, six tonnes of beans, more than 200 boxes of corn soya blend, 100-plus boxes of vegetable oil, and 13 bags of salt to the shore at Anse-à-Veau.
Captain Johnson said that the ongoing humanitarian operation is emotionally challenging, but very rewarding "Coming ashore here, meeting the people, seeing the desperation and circumstances under which these poor people are living at the moment; it means a huge amount to be out here, doing a proper job, and actually making a difference."
To follow the progress of RFA Largs Bay's involvement in the ongoing relief effort in Haiti, you can visit the ship's daily blog.
|
