B.D.F. making waves in Haiti reconstruction

Haiti was rocked by a seven-point-o magnitude earthquake in January of this year and completely devastated the capital city of Port Au Prince.  Although the total number of casualties remains undetermined it is reported that over two hundred and thirty thousand people perished in the aftermath of the natural disaster.  Since then the country has received humanitarian aid from various international organizations including the Red Cross in recovering from the catastrophe.  Belize’s contribution has been in reconstruction efforts by BDF personnel.   Since June the BDF Light Engineering Company has been on the island working closely with members of the Louisiana Army National Guard to conduct a series of training missions.  The purpose of the exercise according to Brigadier General Dario Tapia is to provide military support to civil authorities in the areas of medical assistance and the reconstruction of schools and clinics.

Brig. Gen. Dario Tapia, Commandant Belize Defense Force

dario tapia

“We are primarily here doing some construction of some schools. We visited a number—yesterday—I went to the three of them that they worked on and it’s gratifying to see that they worked on a good cause. The Haitian people were badly damaged as a result of the earthquake and I think the fellows did a fantastic job and that’s all the words that I get from the American Taskforce Commander. We have a state partnership program that has been ongoing—if I’m not mistaken—since 1996. When we started it and up to now it has gone from strength to strength over the years. And so this is the state partnership program at work.”

Brigadier General Dario Tapia and Colonel Chris Eldridge of the U.S. Army recently concluded a two-day visit to officially open schools and clinics that were built by both armies.

chris elridge

Col. Chris Eldridge, Military Liaison Officer, U.S. Army

“It’s a great opportunity to partner with the Government of Belize and with the Belizean Defence Force, specifically the engineers that were sent down here. Our mission here is to construct four news schools in Gonaives, which is about ninety miles north of Port au Prince. We also going to come back here to Port au Prince and construct police substations for the government of Haiti so the Haitian national police can work in the IDP camps and give them an area to house them that’s centrally located in the IDP area to provide security. In addition to the engineer missions that Belize Defence Force engineers helped construct some of the new schools, we are doing ten medical readiness training exercises here in Haiti. As we go through those ten medical training exercises, we’ve conducted eight of them so far and we’ve seen over sixty thousand patients.”