We want to thank all of you that  have been great supporters in the Past of Disaster Aid Canada and continue today to help us to help others in times of emergency, and strife.

We have several new programs that provide Pure Filtered Water, Hygiene Kits and Disaster Aid Tents all over the world.  Right now we are working full out to get Canadian Aid into Cuba over the next week or so.

Being a truly Canadian project we are also working with several Rotary clubs and our individual supporters to assist them with aid programs that initiate from within your club or group.  We are providing our Sawyer Water filters that can produce up to One Million gallons of pure filtered water without any electrical systems whatsoever.  This truly fits into your project to provide water in a foreign destination. 

Please feel free to contact us anytime so we can make a presentation to your club or group on our newest initiatives.  Last year, quite a few Rotary clubs had us do a club presentation through SKYPE.  We can beam right into your meeting with the skype system through a computer and projector right up onto the big screen.  Quite a novel way to bring something new to your club meetings!  Feel free to contact me personally to set one of these up with you.

Call me anytime if your club or its members want further info or you have a specific project that we can work with you to help others with.  We also ask you to forward this newsletter to your members and interested friends, to keep them up to date on our endeavours.

Regards - Don Ohlgren - Disaster Aid Canada.

  

We are packing a container with as many Disaster Aid Kits from Canada that we can get financed through donations.

All we are waiting for at this time is the last signature on the permits to import into Cuba and we will be underway.  It's expected that the shipment will leave within the week.  It will be going directly to the Santiago Cuba area that was hardest hit.

Any financial support that you can provide to assist the people of Cuba, right now, will be deeply appreciated.  Kindly click on the donate now button so we can send as many kits as possible.

We also want to send 1000 of our hygiene kits to provide improved sanitation in the midst of this chaos.

Our "SAWYER" water filter systems will also be going on this container.  Remember each water filter will produce up to ONE MILLION GALLONS of pure filtered water.

Disaster Aid Kit (complete with 10 person tent and all support gear)   $750.00

SAWYER WATER FILTERS    $60.00   each.

HYGIENE KITS     $100.00 will provide for 50 of these kits.

Please help with whatever you can spare to assist the people of CUBA through this trying time.

By Cheryl LaBash on November 5, 2012

Before laying waste to the Eastern U.S., Hurricane Sandy ripped through Caribbean islands, causing deaths in Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and even well-prepared Cuba.

Despite 330,000 evacuations in the Eastern provinces, Santiago de Cuba, the island's second-largest city with nearly half a million people, reported nine deaths, and Guantánamo two deaths, primarily from collapsing buildings and falling trees. Holguín province was also hard hit, but suffered no casualties. Granma Daily reported early damage estimates at 132,733 homes, with 15,322 totally destroyed and 43,426 losing roofs.

On Oct. 26, the initial damage estimate was more than $2.1 billion, not including losses in tourism, sugar, coffee and other crops, construction, pharmaceutical and other productive sectors.

In addition to the losses in agriculture, food production, processing and distribution networks in Santiago were severely damaged. With 186 area grocery stores destroyed, family homes or workplaces have become distribution centers for the rationed family food basket.

Eleven catering units are serving food. Tents usually used for the Santiago Nights recreation project are being used by 29 city councils for distribution and sale of prepared food. (Juventud Rebelde, Nov. 2)

The most pressing immediate challenge is restoring power to Santiago de Cuba province, where the storm affected all the 127 circuits available. Raúl García Barreiro, director-general of the National Electrical Union, leads more than 2,000 lineworkers battling to reconnect the province to the national electrical grid. President Raúl Castro, who visited all the storm-damaged provinces, said, "I'm not leaving until Santiago has electricity." (Granma, Nov. 3)

In addition to deploying electrical and other specialized workers and heavy equipment, other provinces shipped materials, including utility poles, roofing materials and food. Production of transformers and the harvesting of crops were accelerated. Artemisa province in western Cuba sent 940 tons of sweet potatoes and 40 tons of malanga root, excess from the abundant harvest this year. Octavio Morera, a stevedore working with others to bring aid, said they had made a commitment to help the victims of Sandy. Solidarity, he said, "is what makes us Cubans and it is a way to pay back for all the help we have received when we have been hit by similar storms." (Cuban News Agency, Nov. 2)

International solidarity is also arriving. Venezuela began a seven-day air bridge to send 646 tons of non-perishable food, water, equipment and machinery for Cuba and Haiti. The Dominican Republic sent tall ladders for electrical restoration. On Nov. 3, Bolivia sent the first of two shipments of water and food totalling 120 tons of aid, noting the solidarity Cuba had shown in helping to eliminate illiteracy and train Bolivian doctors. Russia airlifted 30 tons of construction supplies.

Hurricane Sandy entered Cuba just west of Santiago de Cuba as a category 2 hurricane.  However the extent and speed of Sandy gave it a destructive capability as great as any of the category 5 hurricanes.  Its central path took it rapidly through the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Holguín and Guantánamo, the former two provinces being the most populous in Cuba after the City of Havana. The hurricane devastated the heroic city of Santiago de Cuba, destroying houses, destroying the airport, damaging public buildings and monuments, leaving the city without water supply, food, electricity, shops, markets and trees.  Despite massive evacuations, it took a toll of some 11 human lives, an unusually high number in Cuba for hurricanes (mainly by collapsing buildings) - 132,733 houses were affected with 15,322 totally destroyed and 43,426 losing roofs.  Massive damage, not yet fully calculated. President Raúl Castro, visiting Santiago de Cuba on Sunday, Oct.  28, said that only urgent temporary measures can be taken and that the recovery of Santiago would take years.

Disaster Aid Canada helps Woodwynn with tents for homeless camp

Disaster Aid Canada, which usually helps alleviate disasters overseas, has sprung into action for the first time in Canada - with help going to the camp for homeless people at Wood-wynn Farms in Central Saanich.

Disaster Aid Canada, headquartered in Victoria and supported by Rotary Clubs across the country, has donated 10 three-bedroom tents to the Creating Homefulness Society, a group trying to establish a therapeutic community for homeless people.

"It is the first time we have deployed in Canada," said Don Ohlgren, Disaster Aid executive director. "This is a disaster, so let's give a hand," he said.

Several donors came forward to suggest that support should go to Wood-wynn, Ohlgren said.

The camp at Woodwynn contravenes municipal bylaws, but, this summer the council suggested the society could apply for a temporary conditional use permit, allowing structures without foundations to be used for three years.

The tents, which are specially made for Disaster Aid, have a 15-centimetre gap between the inner and outer wall to act as insulation, and are worth about $5,000 in total, Ohlgren said. "They aren't going to work really well at 20 degrees below [freezing], but they are better than being outside."

If people want privacy, three occupants can each have their own bedroom, but the six-metre by six-metre tents will sleep 10, Ohlgren said.

Disaster Aid has recently sent tents and survival kits to Thailand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Ghana and Afghanistan and school tents to Libya and Haiti.

"We are an emergency organization that provides housing and assistance around the world," Ohlgren said.

Two tents have been erected at the West Saanich Road farm and the rest will go up as soon as platforms are built, said Richard Leblanc, the society's executive director.

"I was phenomenally surprised. These are not regular tents by any means," Leblanc said.

"This is really timely given the announcement of 30 deaths," he said.

Last week, Victoria social service agencies said 30 homeless or under-housed people have died this summer - three times more than usual.

Seven formerly homeless people are camping at the farm and that number sometimes rises to about 14, said Leblanc, who is planning to spread the word that there is now comfortable accommodation available. Porta-potties are on site and meals are served at the nearby farm cottage.

Please click on the YouTube video at the bottom after you read this article from a Canadian who was in Cuba during the storm.

Hola a todos:

   Exactly two weeks ago I was arriving to Santiago de Cuba, few hours after  the hurricane Sandy hit Cuban land. This was my third trip to Cuba in this year.  I have been working in my first documentary about Cuba. The purpose of this trip  was to interview a group of cuban musicians who were in Vancouver, and want to collect their impression and film their daily life in Cuba after being in Canada for 3 months, but Sandy was having a surprise for everybody. The result, some of these musicians lost their houses as many people did. Suddenly myself was in Santiago. I felt being in a war zone without soldiers, I saw only people trying to rebuilt  their houses with the remains of materials could find in the ground. My friend rented an apartment for me to stay in Santiago,  this place was a shelter. I missed my flight back because was impossible to find gas and driving back to the other side of the island. Thanks to Nohra I manage to get back last week.

    I'm still emotional when I remember that. If I hadn't been there filming the destruction, my vision would be completely different as if I would have seen the scenes of the hurricane in TV. Unfortunately in North America the press has been only focus on Sandy's destruction in United States, but Cuba is still in state of disaster, there is still not electricity in many areas of Santiago after 2 weeks, therefore; many Cubans have to deal everyday  with the lack of food, money and material to rebuilt their houses.  That's the reason I create this video to share my material and ask people who willing  to contribute and help families who lost everything. I don't like my self to ask for money, but in this case  even 5 dollars will make a big difference in people's life. Most Cubans make $20.00 per month. 

   I will ask you to pass my video. Yesterday a production company  from London, England contacted me to use some of my clips for a documentary about the hurricane Sandy for Discovery channel, because there is not much material from Cuba. I'm glad that my trip had a  humanitarian mission. I felt as a journalist not a Spanish teacher or a crazy mexican woman trying to be a documentalist that I hope one day I will be.

   I will appreciate if you can pass this video among people you know who would like to help and contribute in anyway.

http://youtu.be/DKIomSS9rgU

I wish all the best and thanks a lot.

Don
Don Ohlgren
Disaster Aid Canada

426 William Street, Victoria

BC, Canada

V9A 3Y9