Telecoms Charity Flies Out to the Dominican Republic

Telecoms Sans Frontieres (TSF) deployed a crew of emergency telecommunication specialists to the Dominican Republic to support the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination teams (UNDAC) in the aftermath of storm Noel which seriously affected the country.

The Centre for Emergency Operations (COE) reported that 73 people had been killed, 46 are still missing and more than 25,000 people were driven from their homes. The provinces located on the southern coast are the most affected.

TSF's team from TSF's Americas base situated in Managua, Nicaragua landed in the capital Santo Domingo on Thursday evening. TSF's crew is carrying IT and satellite communications equipment to deploy Emergency Communication Centres (ECC) and already deployed a first ECC in the office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Santo Domingo.

This mission in supported by the Vodafone Group Foundation (VGF), the United Nations Foundation and TSF's corporate partners: Inmarsat, France Telecom, Eutelsat, AT&T, Vizada and Cable & Wireless. This is TSF's twelfth emergency mission since signing an agreement with the United Nations in May 2006.

You can read about the TSF here - http://www.tsfi.org/

Posted to the site on 5th November 2007