The trailer-mounted water treatment system quickly provided desperate communities in Haiti with thousands of gallons of clean water after the 2021 earthquake. And it will be ready for the next disaster.
It’s easy to assume that you’ll have water to drink and cook and clean and make your morning coffee but imagine yourself in Maniche, Haiti, on the mid-morning of August 14.
At least 90 percent of homes and other structures were turned to rubble in Maniche, Haiti.
The whole world seems to jolt to the point where your bones rattle, your teeth chatter, the ground feels like it might explode. And when that’s over you realize it’s not a dream. You were out gathering water. The can is overturned with water streaming out. You gain your footing. Grab the can and run toward the house.
In just minutes your whole community has been turned upside down. Homes crumble in on themselves. You hear violent screaming. You shake your head to be sure you’re awake. You are. But you’re also in an unfolding nightmare.
In the fog of grief and confusion the kids are begging. They’re hungry. Tired. Thirsty. Most of all thirsty.
“Mwen swaf,” they tell you, expressing their thirst in Creole but almost too tired to ask again. “Mwen swaf.”
“Trè byento,” you say. “Very soon.”
Life-Saving Engineering
The 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck near the southern coast of Haiti last year flattened homes and killed at least 2,200 people. It also severed the supply of clean drinking water to places like Maniche, where as much as 90 percent of homes were flattened or made otherwise unlivable.
Disaster response teams always face the difficult task of transporting clean water equipment to remote locations.
Located near the quake’s epicenter, Maniche was among the hardest-hit areas, and its infrastructure was in shambles.
“After the earthquake, the well dried up. There was no water. No nothing. After two days, the well water came back as mud. Our people started drinking from the river. Lack of clean water became the greatest threat,” said Jean David Brinard, mayor of Maniche.
Samaritan’s Purse airlifted relief supplies and personnel aboard our DC-8 to assist hurting communities. Also included on this flight was a recently developed system that could be transported quickly to the areas of greatest need.
We praise God that engineers on the Samaritan’s Purse water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) team had been configuring and finalizing a portable water filtration and purification system for such a disaster event.
Our FreshSpring 4.0 unit is a trailer-mounted emergency drinking water system that can filter, purify, and store enough clean drinking water to provide 30,000 gallons a day. Maniche was the first location where this life-saving unit was deployed.
Samaritan’s Purse engineers have answered the problem by designing a trailer configuration easy to transport by air and then transport by trailer hitch.
Mayor Brinard was among the first to welcome our WASH team to his town and expressed immense gratitude as the clean water began to flow into the bottles and jerry cans of local residents.
“No one could find water to drink,” said Mayor Brinard. “I thank you guys because what you did today is a big thing for the community. Now we have water to drink.”
Portable, High-Capacity Water Treatment
What made the FreshSpring so useful during this Haiti response was its portability and ease of installation in unpredictable and difficult circumstances.
Our WASH engineers worked alongside local water technicians and engineers in Maniche.
It was wheeled onto the DC-8 airlift and wheeled off in the same configuration. The trailer that carried it was able to be hitched to a truck and pulled across rugged terrain—like the rutted-out roads leading into Maniche.
“It was critically important to get clean water to communities within three days of this disaster,” said Scott Powell, Senior Global Technical WASH Advisor with the Samaritan’s Purse Projects Department. “This is the timeframe in which people risk severe dehydration and risk illness from contaminated water. The FreshSpring 4.0 represents the next generation in WASH, a unit engineered in-house so we can control the quality and supply chain of related materials.”
With a minimal number of people, the system was set up and running within a couple of hours. WASH team member Andrew Rice said after all the engineering and planning, God also worked out unforeseen details in miraculous ways in Haiti. Andrew worked on the team that developed the system and then deployed to install it.
“We towed it in on the back of a truck and set up in a river bed in Maniche,” Rice said. “The Lord had given us this design and configuration and when we arrived in Maniche, he brought a local engineering student and a water treatment technician across our paths—both living near Maniche.”
Samaritan’s Purse has worked extensively in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak, a waterborne illness that claimed thousands of lives. Providing clean drinking water early after a disaster can prevent such devastating outbreaks, which are caused by desperate residents collecting water from contaminated streams and other water sources.
Families in Maniche received life-saving water through this newly-deployed portable clean water system.
Please continue in prayer for Samaritan’s Purse teams as we seek new and innovative to provide help—clean water and other urgent needs—in Jesus’ Name.
