When disaster struck in Haiti, a Toronto-based television production team was among the first to respond, as they began work on a documentary following the efforts of Red Cross emergency relief workers.
PTV Productions' "Inside Disaster" documentary team is embedded with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent disaster relief team known as FACT (Field Assessment and Co-ordination Team), and arrived in Haiti last Thursday to film the operation.
Director Nadine Pequeneza spoke to CTV.ca via satellite phone from a Red Cross compound in Port-au-Prince and said "at times it seems hopeless" in Haiti.
Pequeneza, along with two crew members, have had unprecedented access to the FACT team in the biggest operation in their history. FACT is the first team on the ground and assesses the situation for emergency response units to come in and provide specific types of disaster relief.
However, she said the Red Cross team is running into enormous difficulties.
"There's no fuel, it's really difficult to find diesel or gas . . . there's no food . . . it's tough to find water," Pequeneza said. "The Red Cross is having difficulty keeping their vehicles fueled . . . Running the operation is tough, (the different units) are having difficulty communicating with each other.
"Logistically, Haiti is a very, very challenging place because so many people have been affected."
Pequeneza's crew is staying with in a Red Cross compound, with about 100 aid workers, who share a single toilet. They are sleeping outside because of fears of aftershocks, and the Toronto office is currently working to get tents sent from the Dominican Republic to Port-au-Prince.
PTV Productions president Andrea Nemtin told CTV.ca from Toronto it is important that her film crew is self-sufficient to ensure they aren't taking resources away from aid agencies or victims from the disaster.
They don't go out after 6 p.m. as "law and order has been difficult to implement" but Pequeneza said her crew has been able to travel and film safely during the day.
On Monday, a group of 150 people tried to push their way into the Red Cross compound in the mistaken belief that the organization was sitting on a warehouse of supplies.
Two base camps are due to be operational on Thursday, which will provide the organization with a steady food and water supply.
"(Aid workers) want to get going, they want to get out there . . . they are waiting for their supplies to get in," she said.
Pequeneza described a number of scenes she has seen since her arrival, that have become all too familiar - amputations without anesthesia, looters shot in the street, the uncountable bodies.
"We've all cried once, at least," she said of her crew. "It's a desperate situation with no way out, that's been really hard."
"Dead bodies are everywhere . . . at times it seems hopeless. I really want to see how humanitarian organizations as a whole are going to deal with it . . . It's huge."
Five days after arriving in Haiti, Pequeneza said she hasn't seen a huge improvement, but it's hard to say because the devastation is so wide-spread and it's hard to get a big picture view.
"The relief has just started to trickle out to the communities, so we'll see."
While Pequeneza's crew is focused on the Red Cross and the people they meet during their aid operations, a second three-person crew on "Inside Disaster" is in Haiti filming those in need of help.
The crews have been posting videos and blogs on their website, , which also has links to donation and relief organizations.
"It's a really hard situation and I think they have mostly been working on adrenaline," Nemtin said of her team. "They are the most professional crew you could hope for."
Waiting for a disaster
The production team had been on standby since September, literally waiting for a disaster to happen, after reaching a deal with the Red Cross to follow them for a documentary.
Nemtin described an operation that was more militaristic than journalistic in nature.
"We've been ready to go since mid-September, and in the office, we've had our go kits, meals and supplies, satellite phones . . . American dollars" she said. "A FACT team has to be ready to go at any time."
"We (read) the Red Cross manuals, we tested all of our equipment, we held prep meetings (as) we had no idea what disaster we would be going to."
The crews also needed to be immunized for every country they could be potentially sent to.
"We were are prepared as we could be," Nemtin said.
However, earthquakes are one of the most unpredictable of natural disasters and Nemtin said the team had been focused on hurricane and typhoon patterns.
The crew will follow the first 30 days of the disaster relief efforts, which will be the basis for two one-hour documentaries. They will return in six months to see how the rebuilding operation has gone, which will be the basis for the final one hour for the series.
The series will on TVO, Canal D and CTV's ACCESS in Alberta in 2011 and is being produced with some funding from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the participation of the Canadian Television Fund.
