Tue, 19 Jan 2010 8:10p.m.
By Mike McRoberts
Filed Tuesday 19 January
They’re an integral part of any disaster you go and cover. The well meaning, often hardworking aid agencies and then those low lives who seem to think it’s fine use a catastrophe to feather their own nest.
Today I met Yolette Etienne who’s head of Oxfam’s Haiti office and has been working with the organisation for ten years. No small feat in a country like Haiti where the demands are exhausting. She features in my story on January 19 about the fuel crisis that has hit Port au Prince, unfortunately we only had time for one comment from her, but her own story is quite amazing.
On the day of the earthquake Yolette was at the Oxfam office and it was there she learned quickly that her mother had been killed. Yolette then went home and discovered her house had also been demolished.
She knew the demands that would be placed on her as head of Oxfam over the ensuing days and weeks so she buried her mother the next morning in the back of her property and then went to work.
It’s hard to imagine how difficult that must have been. What an incredibly selfless and courageous thing to do.
Today I also saw the other side of the coin.
There’s a petrol crisis in Port au Prince though it seems a largely artificial one. Most petrol stations haven’t opened since the quake and those that have are rationing fuel. The reason one station owner gave me today was because the banks aren’t open and they’re worried about holding so much cash.
But that doesn’t explain why the price of gas has gone up 2 US dollars a gallon and is now more than double that on the black-market.
No wonder people here are so frustrated. Surely the three most important necessities in a situation like this are water, food and fuel. Most seemed to have used all their fuel trying to find the first two, now they are told there’s no more fuel or they’ll have to pay an exorbitant price for it.
Someone is doing well out of this earthquake and it stinks.