Four team members played a pivotal role in coordinating the work of more than fifty international search and rescue teams in Port-au-Prince and in other devastated towns. As well as creating and issuing vital maps to sectorise the affected area, the team provided GPS coordinates and directions for hundreds of reported locations of victims; some instigated through mobile phone SMS messages from trapped individuals themselves.

Following the transition to the relief phase of the emergency, MapAction provided start-up staffing for the UN Humanitarian Information Centre (HIC) in Port-au-Prince. In total, eleven of the charity's volunteers deployed to Haiti, in several waves from the charity's UK and Caribbean regional teams. Two team members have in fact returned to Haiti after a break of only a few days, to work in support of UN OCHA and the Emergency Shelter Cluster.

This has been the most intensive and arduous mission in MapAction's experience. During the first weeks team members in the field had to get by with only short snatches of sleep. Temperatures in the working tents topped 40 degrees and clouds of dust clogged printers. Despite this, dozens of reference and situation map products were generated and thousands of copies issued in the field to relief organisations.

This is MapAction's second mission to Haiti: in September 2008 the NGO deployed a team there in response to a string of tropical storms that struck the north of the country. MapAction is now planning reconstruction support to the country's national mapping agency that lost most of its staff and all of its facilities in this year's'earthquake.

For further up to date deployment details including new maps and diary entries follow the link to the Haiti Earthquake Deployment Page.

The deployment is in response to a request for mapping and information management support for a UN OCHA disaster assessment and coordination mission. Severe seasonal rains and the passage of Hurricane Ida across central America caused flash floods and mudslides across a large area of El Salvador. There have been scores of deaths and thousands made homeless.

As a MapAction team flew out to emergency, the charity noted the deployment as its tenth field mission so far in 2009. The mission tally has included five flooding emergencies across Africa and Asia, the Sumatra earthquake, and humanitarian crises in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Teams have also undertaken disaster risk reduction projects in Papua New Guinea and Kenya, and a further project is scheduled in Niger in December.

The charity’s chief executive Nigel Woof said: “We’ve never been this busy. Our field mapping service has been in demand time and again this year. It continues to be a real stretch but our volunteers are just fantastic.”