Secretary of State Clinton Announces "People Finder" Tool for those Missing in Haiti
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today the launch of a new tool on
www.state.gov, the
“Person Finder”, to allow people to find and share information on missing loved ones in Haiti. The tool can be found at
http://www.state.gov/haitiquake.
NPR Haiti Photo Slideshow
NPR Haiti Earthquake Coverage
The stories featured here are the three top Haiti-related stories at any given time on NPR.
NPR Disaster Coverage FAQ
NPR's Disaster Coverage: How Does It
Happen
(1-15-10)In
the wake of disasters, news organizations must instantly shift staff, equipment,
and resources to cover the event. Here's a Q&A with NPR News Director of
Operations Charlie Mayer about the behind-the-scenes factors at play in NPR's
coverage of the earthquake in Haiti.
Q: Given the huge difficulties of air travel into and
out of Haiti, how is NPR getting our reporters on the ground to do their
work?
This is thanks entirely to the
resourcefulness, leadership, and dedication of National Desk Assistant Producer
Gisele Grayson and Morning
Edition Senior Editor Maeve McGoran who have wrestled us on to all
manner of charter flights out of Miami. The best story (and I don't know the
details) is Morning Edition
Senior Producer Tom Bullock. He arrived in Port au Prince last night on a King
Air plane owned by Ted Turner. No kidding.
Q: With electricity down, how are
reporters powering their equipment?
NPR correspondent Carrie Kahn charged her Iridium sat phone at
a medical tent on Wednesday night. NPR is now set up at a hotel where there is
power.
Q:
Are they using sat phones to file stories? Some of them sound a little garbled -
is that the satellite interference?
The garbled
sound comes from a handheld sat phone called an Iridium
. When Carrie Kahn
departed Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, this was the only sat phone she could
take. There was no room for producer Amy Walters or the larger Nera sat phone that we are used to
hearing.
At first, Tom Bullock was up and running with a very special
Nera sat phone that we call Nera 1. It was based in Brazil with Martin Kaste. It
was used for the Reagan funeral. It did duty in Hurricane Katrina. It died after
that and was rebuilt by Galaxy One, our superb satellite phone provider.
After being rebuilt,
Nera 1 went to China to cover the Chengdu earthquake. Senior
editor for operations Bob Duncan says that Nera 1 “is like an old car with a new
engine.”
We are also using
Nera 4. This sat phone lives at NPR West. It has seen action in East Timor,
Islamabad, Egypt, Vienna, Kuwait, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Wilma, and the
2003 US invasion of Iraq. While in
Dubai with correspondent Mike Shuster, the antenna of Nera 4 took flight from the top
of a very tall building. The antenna was destroyed and had to be replaced, but
Nera 4 continues to work.
Now that everyone
has arrived, we have six sat phones on the ground: Two Hughes 9201, one Explorer
110 and three Neras (including Neras 1 and 4, which are both 8.5 years old). We
will now use those sat phones to file stories, so the garbled Iridium sound will
become less present on the air. Some of these sat phones can be used to access
the Internet, as well.
We have four Iridium handheld sat phones, which
are useful because the local mobile network is not totally working. Our Verizon
international BlackBerries are not working at all.
Q: With such a wide-scale disaster,
how do NPR staff on the ground in Haiti taking care of their basic needs for
shelter, food, and water?
This is the primary
responsibility of producer Tom Bullock. We scrambled Tom early yesterday. He
filled up a Pelican case (a water-tight hardcase we use to transport equipment)
with camping and survival gear that we keep on hand for this kind of operation.
Huge credit on this goes to Logistics Manager Bill Craven. We've got a mini REI
and CVS that Bill has kept stocked for years. This is all Bill. This time last
year, that stash kept us going through the frigid Obama inauguration. Yesterday
we cleared the shelves in support of the Haiti
operation.
Here’s what we sent
from Bill's depot:
2 or 3 sleeping
mats
Bungee
cords
Two first-aid
kits
2 rolls duct
tape
Flashlight
Masks
1 boss
light
8 packs
matches
1
headlamp
Cable & safety
pins
2 packets
wipes
1 box non-lubricated
Trojan condoms (These are standard field equipment – they go over the
microphones if it rains.)
2 energizer LED
lights
2
inverters
2
tarps
2
sunscreens
2
afterbite
1 baggie full of
mosquito spray wipes
2 large
raincoats
1 sleeping
shell
2 water purification
pumps
1
laptop
Batteries
This was supplemented
by the following supplies Maeve bought in Miami, and stowed in one large duffle
bag, which she bought at Target. Everything below fit in it, except for 4 dozen
of the water bottles which were carried separately by Tom on Ted Turner’s King
Air.
5
dozen 12 oz. bottles of water
2
gallon jugs of water
Trail mix in many
flavors
Beef jerky (flavors including
Teriyaki and Kansas City BBQ)
Dried Fruit (including raisins,
apricots, cherries, blue berries, and cranberries)
Tuna in a Pouch
Cooked Chicken in a
Pouch
Crank Flashlights
A huge bottle of
Purell
Smaller bottles of
Purell
Heavy duty leather work
gloves
Small cans of fruit including
mandarin oranges and peaches
Power Bars (many dozens in many
flavors)
Granola Bars
Deputy Director
of Operations Sharahn Thomas, NPR's Operations Desk, and NPR's Information
Services division have scrambled to activate and deploy mobile devices and extra
reporting gear.
Q: What kind of transportation do NPR staff members
have in Haiti? How did you get it for them -- or did they get it
themselves?
They have hired a car and driver. They
are also walking. Fuel is in short supply.
Q: How will you get them out, with
flights restricted?
Flights are restricted. But
our charter wranglers are somehow getting our people on the flights that are
going. We have considered chartering our own plane, but have not had to do
that.
Q: On
the Information Services side, what happens if they have computer issues? Do
they carry backups?
We haven't heard of a single
computer problem. Why? Because we put our people in the field with hardware that
works. The best kind of support is preparation. Huge credit on this goes to
Information Services Manager Oumar Sall, the Information Services Help Desk, and
Bob Duncan.
We did send a spare laptop with Bullock.
If anybody
were to have trouble, Bullock would be the first line of defense. If that
doesn't work, then the IS staff hotline and Bob Duncan are standing by to
help.
Bob was been working with our sat phone provider this morning to
fix one issue with Jason Beaubien's sat phone, and reports it's now back in
action.
Q: Do Blackberries work on the
island? How are the reporters keeping in
touch?
Not at this point. The mobile network seems
to be coming back to life, but our Verizon gear is not working. This is because
the Haitian provider that handles Verizon traffic was hit hard and their network
is saturated. We're hopeful that this will improve. Oumar is working with
Verizon.
In the meantime, handheld Iridium phones are being used as we
would normally use our BlackBerries.
Q: What other behind-the-scenes work is underway that
staff may not know about?
Nothing happens without
money and NPR Finance has done an amazing job with the cash. This started before
the banks opened on Wednesday. NPR Accounting Manager Susie Julbe and her team
expedited wire transfers for Amy and Carrie early Wednesday and have since moved
wire transfers for numerous other people. It is a cash economy at this point, so
the availability and security of our cash is a top priority. Fortunately, Tom
Bullock is an expert at this after years in Baghdad, Kabul, and other garden
spots.
Some of our first responders on this were our engineers Melissa
Marquis and Michael Cullen. They scrambled in the immediate aftermath of the
earthquake to get Newscast set up with Skype.
The team effort across NPR
has been amazing.