PRESS BRIEFING BY WFP ON RELIEF EFFORTS IN WAKE OF HURRICANE MITCH

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY WFP ON RELIEF EFFORTS IN WAKE OF HURRICANE MITCH

"Anyone on the ground will tell you this is the worst natural disaster to hit Central America in two centuries", a spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP), Abby Spring, said during a Headquarters briefing upon her return from a week-long mission to Nicaragua in the wake of Hurricane Mitch.

It was obviously a serious crisis, Ms. Spring continued as she described the $58 million appeal announced by the WFP today, targeted at women and children in rural areas. Anywhere between two-and-a-half and three million people had been seriously affected by the hurricane. Probably 10,000 people in the four countries had nothing now but the shirts on their backs. Essentially, the international community needed to donate not only food but medical supplies and helicopters, since access was the primary problem.

There were only 20 helicopters in the whole country, she said, and the entire social infrastructure had been wiped out, with hundreds of bridges, roads, water treatment plants and communications lines gone while houses were underwater. It was complete devastation and the situation was worse in Honduras.

As an example, Ms. Spring said she had arrived last Wednesday and had gone out the next day on a WFP distribution route. Due to the shortage of helicopters, the distribution was undertaken by truck, and what should have taken two hours ended up taking twenty-four. Once the truck had traversed a body of water, the rains had started up again, making it impossible to return. After spending the night in a town, the team had attempted to leave and the bridge had collapsed.

"What I went through during that one day is what the people there have been going through for over a week now", Ms. Spring said. A mere half hour out of Managua, most towns had had no water, no electricity and no access to food since the start of the storm. The WFP had been the first organization on the ground providing food during the disaster because it had already been there for three decades doing development work. Approximately 11,000 tons of food had been in the country when the emergency had hit, which had enabled the WFP to start feeding people around the country immediately.

A correspondent said it seemed money was coming in from governments, church groups, bilateral aid and various entities. How well were efforts coordinated and organized? Also, what was the scale of the effort relative to other efforts, such as in Goma or Afghanistan?

Ms. Spring said that the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was touring the area now, would be in a better position to answer the question about coordination upon his return on Friday.

United Nations Spokesman Fred Eckhard said arrangements were being made for Mr. Vieira de Mello to give correspondents a briefing at noon on Monday or Tuesday of next week. Mr. Vieira de Mello would be addressing the medium-term coordination while the WFP spokesman was briefing on the immediate emergency reaction, the Spokesman added.

With regard to the scale of effort, Ms. Spring said she was a press officer and not a relief worker for WFP, but she had travelled to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, China, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Indonesia, and the striking aspect of the Hurricane Mitch disaster was the number of countries and people affected at once, in addition to the limited access, which made it nearly impossible to move two kilometres at a time.

"The visual scenario is summed up by driving down the Pan American Highway", Ms. Spring said. "For a kilometre or two, everything seems almost tranquil, with cattle in green pastures. Then suddenly the world turns black and white, with everything covered in mud, trees down, buildings down, bodies on the road, cows wrapped around barbed wire fences. It's quite grizzly."

Asked about the sufficiency of money coming in, Ms. Spring said she was certain that the promised monies would soon start arriving and there was good reason to believe that the United States, for example, would resource the WFP generously. "But as of yet, we don't have any figures", she said.

"I know one thing they'll need in addition to food", she said, "is people who know how to build bridges and so forth. Infrastructure is a huge issue. And another factor entering in is that rainy season ends this week in Central America. With any luck, if the rain does end, good weather will make a huge difference in terms of the water receding and trucks being able to go down even before the bridges being built and getting to people."

In response to a question on conditions in neighbouring countries, Ms. Spring said fact sheets were available with charts at the side table of the briefing room. Those breakdowns showed that while El Salvador and Guatemala had not been as badly hit as Nicaragua and Honduras, there was no question they had been hit. Estimates in El Salvador, for example, indicated that 58,000 people had been affected and over 200 had died. But another important factor was that over 30 per cent of coffee production in El Salvador, which was the main export, had been lost. Among the small, subsistence farmers, about 80 per cent were estimated to have had everything wiped out. "So again, what will these people grow"?

Asked how much money had been raised by the United Nations and how the specific sum of $58 million had been targeted for the appeal, along with whether that would be enough, Ms. Spring said that a better idea of needs would emerge within about a week. The appeal had just gone out today and it was hard to say how much the WFP or the other agencies had raised. The United

WFP Briefing - 3 - 12 November 1998

States, for example, had pledged $70 million for all four countries, which broke down to different target areas they would be paying for. The $58 million figure was a very targeted number in terms of who were the most vulnerable and for how long they would have to be fed.

The $58 million was for a six-month period and she said the hope was that after six months, it would be possible to move into the development phase, where enough livelihood was being provided for people to start taking care of themselves. "If it's not enough, we put out another appeal. It's certainly enough for what we do, which is to target the most needy for the short run."

A representative of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) present at the briefing, said more information on the response would be available once Mr. Vieira de Mello returned, but some information on response thus far was available in "Situation Report" No. 13.

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