Haiti Aid: Bringing Food and Water Through the Back Door

Space aboard the Monarch Queen was procured by Doug Lofland, a South Florida resident who has a big emotional and financial stake in Haiti because he is a principal in Kiskeya Minerals, a stone quarry on the island. Through his Haitian partner, they employ as many as 100 Haitians. None was badly hurt in the quake.

"We just saw all the focus was going to the airport and Port-Au-Prince, " Lofland told WPTV News in Palm Beach last week. Haiti's a big country, "and the western areas are not even getting mentioned in the media," he said.

The key people in the group are Lofland, 59, and Tanya Czarkowski, 32, another Kiskeya quarry investor; and Melissa Dietrich, 33, and her husband Robert Dietrich, 38. The Dietriches have never met Lofland and Czarkowski, although they have communicated furiously in the past week via phone, e-mail and Skype.

Fate or happenstance put them together.

After the Jan. 12 quake, Robert and Melissa Dietrich were desperate to get supplies to their school in Haiti and to her parents, who own and run the small resort of Abaka Bay just off the southern mainland of Haiti. Robert, who occasionally charters a small boat to the island, contacted a Haitian boatman he's hired in the past to ask his help in finding a boat to take relief supplies there. It turned out that the boatman's brother is the captain of the Kiskeya quarry's 75-foot-by-20-foot landing craft that the mine uses to transport equipment .

The boatman contacted his brother, who contacted Lofland, who contacted the Dietriches because of their common concern about aid taking so long to reach Haiti. The project was launched.

The small team's strength is its working knowledge of Haiti, says Robert Dietrich. Lofland worked in several parts of the island as he set up the quarry. He understands how equipment and commodities move into and around Haiti. The Dietriches also have a network in Haiti. "Melissa and I have been connecting with non-profits there for years," said Robert, who runs a parking lot business in Michigan but whose college degree is in social work.

Their goal is to use chartered cargo ships and Haiti-based landing craft to deliver supplies collected by other non-profit groups that have been frustrated in their efforts to get goods to the island. "We're trying to be that conduit," said Lofland.

Added Robert Dietrich: "We want to partner with the non-profits. We're saying to them, 'You have the supplies, but no boat, so hey, let's put it together. We're the transportation, you're the food."

Tanya Czarkowski of Colorado, who handles media relations for the group, wrote in a press release:

"The current problem revolves around the lack of supplies and materials in Haiti. Specifically, the outlying, heavily devastated areas such as Leogane, Grand Goave, Petite Goave, Miragoane and Jacmel where the continuing aftershocks reach magnitudes of 6.0 or more. Other undamaged areas of the Southwestern Provinces that are now cut off from food, and are being overwhelmed with refugees who need assistance as well.

"Our primary goal is to utilize existing equipment and developed relationships to assist the area's working non-profit organizations. . . . Haiti is experiencing a bottleneck of goods and the people are suffering. In response to this need, we have established a method to transport supplies throughout the southern provinces of Haiti. We are bypassing the clogged arteries of Port Au Prince. And we are seeking support in the form of 1) monies to fund shipment, 2) materials for various organizations and 3) relationships with a variety of aid and non-profit entities needing support to continue work in the Haitian communities."

Plans call for the Haiti Life cargo ships to anchor several miles west of Port-Au-Prince, nearer the heavily damaged cities of Carrefour, Grand Goave and Petit Goave, and possibly some ports on the south side of the island. Then Lofland's nimble landing craft, a former Navy LCM-8 from the Vietnam War era, will ferry the goods to shore.

This past weekend, Robert Dietrich was lining up trucks from other non-profits in the area to take the supplies from the shore to an inland warehouse, and from there to four distribution centers.

Working on the ground in Haiti is Melissa Dietrich's father, Fernand Sajous, 56, a retired U.S. military communications specialist and a native of Haiti. Today, he lives on the 20-square-mile island of Ile a Vache (Cow Island) off the southern tip of Haiti, where he owns and operates a small resort with his wife.

Ile a Vache was largely undamaged in the quake, but Sajous was on the main island, near the epicenter of the quake, when it hit. His story of survival, first reported at Politics Daily, was featured in the Hope for Haiti Telethon Friday night by actor Tom Hanks.

Sajous has gotten a commitment from the United Nations envoy in southern Haiti to provide security for the supplies, said Melissa. "My dad just seems to have connections," she said. 'He's just the kind of person who's always helping someone out."

Lofland has been working non-stop on the relief effort for the past 12 days. Soon after the quake, Lofland gave his employees in Haiti permission to use the quarry's earth-moving equipment and personnel to rescue victims and move the dead into mass graves. See a British television video and interview with one of Lofland's employees here.

Also at the time of the quake, in Palm Beach, Lofland had reserved space on a cargo ship docked at the Port of Palm Beach. His first impulse was to fill his portion of the 900-ton cargo space with food and medical donations for Haiti. He hit up other Kiskeya investors, many of them in Colorado, for $20,000 in donations to buy supplies and kick-start the venture. He and friends set up a donation stand on the street, and cab drivers of Haitian descent contributed generously. The next day they set up a South Florida swap shop, and a moving van was filled within hours.

On Saturday, Jan. 16, the Monarch Queen set sail for Haiti, traveling at roughly 8 miles an hour. It arrived Wednesday, and Lofland has been on the phone ever since, trying to dock it somewhere.

Lofland and the Dietriches have been disappointed by the long delay in getting goods off the ship. But they are far from defeated. As Melissa told wrote on the Haiti Life site: "The catch phrase quoted on Hope for Haiti Now telethon by Tom Hanks are the words my father Fernand Sajous used as the devastation was all around. 'Keep going. We need to Keep going.' These are words that inspire us here as we seek to bring aid to Haiti."

Lofland knows Haiti Life faces an uphill battle for donations. "There are so many fraudulent organizations, a project like ours can be lost in the noise."

But he remains determined. "My philosophy is 'Let's see how many ships we can send.' If I can get a semi-full load, I will ship it now because time is so critical."