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HAITI IN CRISIS

Photo by Christopher Todd, National Public Affairs Officer
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Auxiliarists deploy to assist U.S. Coast Guard response to provide relief to Haitian earthquake victims.

MIAMI – Felipe Pazos, Flotilla 6-11 Commander, District 7, (left) provides much needed Spanish language translation capabilities while Bill Swank, Flotilla 6-11 Public Affairs Officer monitors social media network coverage regarding the U.S. Coast Guard response to the January 12, 2010 earthquake which struck Haiti.  Pazos, a member of the Auxiliary Interpreter Corps later travelled to a Spanish-language television station for a live interview while Swank worked to assess media coverage via the Internet.

As of 1445 hrs EDT today (January 17, 2010) local Auxiliary support of the USCG Haiti Relief Joint Information Center (JIC) located at District7 (D7) HQ in Miami continues. To date, the bulk of support for this operation is coming from local Auxiliary personnel from D7 Divisions 3 and 6, with the exception of the social media initiative which is being handled by Ryan Bank, BC-ARN and his team..

Two shifts (AM/PM) of four Auxiliarists each have reported to provide support to the JIC. LT Sue Kerver is the JIC Manager who Auxiliary members report to. The nature if this support consists primarily of Logistics and General Administration tasking, with the addition of some public affairs-specific support, especially in the areas of Spanish and French/Creole language translations and media relations.

As today represents the first day in which most USCG Public Affairs Officers (PAO) will be forward deployed to the Haiti area of responsibility, the bulk of support over the next few days may come from Auxiliary members. This landscape will change depending on the deployment schedules of active duty PAO’s. Auxiliary support is presently scheduled at least through Thursday, 21JAN and may be extended based on projected JIC needs.

In addition, a new Incident Command Post (ICP) with possible public affairs needs is scheduled to be set-up on Tuesday, 19-JAN in the Dania Beach (Ft. Lauderdale) area. The purpose of this ICP is to directly oversee the possible implementation of efforts that prevent interdict alien migration via the maritime domain.

For more information about the efforts of some of the Caribbean SAR volunteer organizations go to http://carsar.cgaux.org

 

~NGS 01-16-10