Thousands find relief in fairway tent camp | The Baltimore Sun
The scene could be taking place anywhere in Port-au-Prince - thousands of sweaty, dusty Haitians squeezed back-to-chest waiting for relief supplies that could determine whether they survive the next few weeks.
But in Petionville, a comparatively well-heeled suburb, the operation reveals more than just the colossal need that exists throughout post-earthquake Haiti. It shows how the disaster crossed boundaries of income and class, turning even the once-exclusive Petionville Club into a fetid expanse of desperation.
And it shows the enormous effort, involving governments, aid organizations and the U.S. military, that is required to satisfy the most basic of human needs in Haiti.
Roughly 400 members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have taken over the club, using the restaurant as a headquarters and taking bucket baths on the bleachers by the tennis courts. A federal disaster-management team has set up a medical clinic on the putting green closest to the clubhouse, and the poolside cabana bar is serving as a pharmacy. The aid group Oxfam International is setting up 90 latrines along the fairways, part of a project to provide water and sanitation for the sprawling tent city.
Karen Ketchie, a disaster-management team leader from Jacksonville, Fla., who works at the club as part of a medical aid group, imagined that Gulf Coast hurricanes were good training for the Haitian relief effort - until she arrived in Petionville.
"There, the infrastructure is up and if we needed something, we could just go a few counties over," she said. "Here it's totally different. Everything you need is a challenge."
As Ketchie spoke near the club's half-empty pool, she was standing next to a sign that read: "Pillar collapse potential if aftershock. Do not stand here."
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