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Haiti

Haiti: Hurricane Matthew Lessons Learned Report - April 2018

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On 4 October 2016, Hurricane Matthew made landfall in South West Haiti near Les Anglais as a very intense Category 4 Hurricane. It then crossed the department of Grande Anse provoking severe damage to road and Information and Communications Technology infrastructure, as well as housing and health facilities. Hurricane Matthew significantly impacted the country’s humanitarian situation, affecting 2.1 million people.

Although the Logistics Cluster was not activated, on 6 October 2016, the Global Logistics Cluster deployed a Logistics Response Team (LRT) to support the government-led Logistics Working Group in its relief efforts with logistics coordination, Information Management and facilitating access to common services.

The Logistics Working Group established coordination units with dedicated staff in Port-au-Prince, Les Cayes and Jérémie, supporting over 150 humanitarian actors on the ground. Coordination meetings were held on a weekly basis in all three locations, in cooperation with the Government’s Directorate of Civil Protection (DPC). Information Management, including GIS, was provided to support humanitarian organisations make informed operational supply decisions. Common logistics services were facilitated both in relation to upstream supply (air and ocean transport to Haiti), and in-country through storage and transport by air, road, and sea. In addition, an International Humanitarian Partnership (IHP) basecamp, with a hosting capacity of 35 people, was set up in Jérémie to offer a base to the humanitarian community working in the area.

Overall, the operation was found to be timely, relevant, effective and efficient in its response, and well received by the humanitarian community and participating partners. The deployment of an experienced and competent team in the early days of the hurricane was seen as a real strength as it allowed for close coordination between the Global Logistics Cluster team, WFP and the Government, resulting in a timely and effective humanitarian response. Substantial and fast support was also received from a variety of stakeholders (including local authorities, donors, and Global Logistics Cluster partners such as the International Humanitarian PartnershipIHP and the Logistics Emergency Teams (LET)

  1. This allowed to support humanitarian actors effectively through logistics coordination, Information Management, and facilitation of access to the services they needed to adequately carry out their relief operations.

The operation encountered several challenges, which mostly affected the efficiency of the response, especially from the planning perspective. Identifying the right logistics services and ensuring these were ready to operate in time was a challenge; different logistics assets were required in various locations (air services, sea services and primary/secondary road transportation), but defining precise requirements was difficult for all humanitarian organisations. Access constraints put a further strain on the response, as different ways to deliver relief items have to be considered (road, air and the sea) delaying some services, particularly coastal services.

A key lesson learned from this emergency response in Haiti is represented by the success of the preparatory work done:

  • At local level: the relationship established between the Government and WFP, and access to relevant logistics assets through WFP (i.e. trucks); and

  • At global level: the early deployment of a highly qualified team with the right set ofskillsincluding language and previous experience in Haiti, and with the pre-hurricane coordination and emergency support arrangements done with partners.

The key lessons from this operation to improve humanitarian response, also in reference to Logistics Cluster’s preparedness strategy and its implementation phases, are:

Phase 1: Mapping, network engagement and expansion of supply, logistics & stakeholders

  • Identifying and engaging local actors prior to an emergency to facilitate their participation in the response. Internet access is very low in Haiti (12 percent), making it even more important to target actors prior to an emergency to ensure they also have means of accessing the otherwise primarily online information from the Logistics Working Group.2

Phase 2: Assessment and analysis

  • Understanding the logistics bottlenecks and possible gaps in various emergency scenarios, how to best respond to them, what assets are required and how to best secure that the assets can be easily deployed. This includes, for example, having road and access data for Haiti, and the identification of relevant landing crafts needed for coastal shipping, which is a critical aspect of operations in Haiti. The country’s Logistics Capacity Assessment is available, however detailed operational data analysisisrequired, also in view of the potentially affected population, access to the markets, etc.

Phase 3: Response planning and capacity strengthening

  • Training of national actors prior to emergencies both related to emergency response, but also in terms of local staff understanding key cluster tools such as the Relief Item Tracking Application (RITA).
  • Training of humanitarian responders prior to and during an emergency in how a Logistics Cluster/Working group functions. This is a recurrent theme across operations, with a high number of responders and turnover in an emergency, there is always a need for orientation and instruction – for example, video instructions on how to fill in the Service Request Form (including guidance on how to measure cargo).

Phase 4: Monitoring and evaluation

  • While the Special Operations project document had KPIs (overall reporting KPIs), the Logistics Working Group did not further define the performance criteria for the operation together with partners. It is recommended for future operations to define and prioritise what are the key performance indicators are for the particular operation in order to be able to measure and manage its performance.

A final recurrent theme is upstream supply coordination, which is not traditionally supported by the Logistics Cluster or Working Groups, but which is repeatedly requested to help provide a useful overview in emergencies. The Global Logistics Cluster organises global conference calls, however, these are not sufficient to address the information gap on supply information between HQ/Global Supply units and the visibility of incoming relief items on the ground. In each operation, there is a request to address this gap, and many attempts over the last decade have been made by various organisations. With its extensive partner base of more than 500 organisations supported in 2017, the Global Logistics Cluster is in a good position to establish an inter-agency working group or a study on how to best address this issue.