美国派遣救援队伍前往海地

Matt, thank you.

Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator for USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. Dr.Shah, good morning.
Good morning, Ann.

Last night, the President said at the White House the situation at about 10pm last night that he wanted USAID and other agencies to do an aggressive, coordinated effort by the US government. So what can you tell us about the first step that the US is taking to do something about this crisis in Haiti?

Well, first, I’d say that our thoughts and our prayers are with the people of Haiti at this critical time. The President is very focused on his top priority which is saving lives in this critical initial 72-hour period, we're also very focused on protecting American citizens who are in Haiti and identifying them and supporting their needs and their families’ needs. We had set up a phone number that American citizens and families can call 18884074747. That’s been set up at the State Department, so the people can inquire about the safety and security of their family members and we’re very focused, of course, on supporting that and on protecting and saving lives in this initial period.

Will US personnel be sent in, and if so how many and how soon?

Yes, well, this happened just before sundown last night. We immediately activated a whole of government response. The President has directed us to be, as you noted, aggressive and coordinated in our efforts. So we have stood up a disaster assistance response team that would be going in today. We have two standing search and rescue teams with specialized technical capabilities and appropriate equipment to begin an aggressive search and rescue effort on the ground in Port-au-Prince. We are obviously concerned about and evaluating the ability to get those assets into Haiti and do that efficiently and we will work very closely with US Southern Command to help make sure that we have the logistic support, the transport capacities and the other needed capabilities in order to put really the full force and capacity of US government to work on behalf of the Haitian people and on behalf of our US citizens in Haiti right now.

What you are indicating is, the problem is that the roads are out, the communication is out. So are you saying that there will be air support, that there will be possibly ship sent to Haiti to do something about this.

That’s correct. We are looking at all our assets, and we’ve already been deploying a number of them to do precisely that we do, I did speak this morning with our ambassador who’s spoken with our government officials including the President in Haiti, President Preval and they have asked for a strong support on search and rescue, especially in this first 72-hour window which is the critical window for that areas.

With a lot of work to do, good luck, Dr.Rajiv Shah, thank you.
Thank you.

And for more information on how you can help support those in need in Haiti , you can log on our website www.hxen.net