Saturday, January 23, 2010

Sheriff Van Blarcum's Office Volenteering in Assisting Haiti Relief


Three members of the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office have volunteered to assist in the humanitarian relief effort in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Group Leader Corrections Sgt. C.J. Polocco, Deputy Sheriff Kevin Richards, and Deputy Sheriff Donald Hughes will be assisting in the distribution of food and medication, providing communications and logistics support for mobile clinics, and working with other personnel in constructing shelters and hygiene facilities.

They are in Haiti under the auspices of Save the Children. The men were flown there on a private aircraft flight arranged by the organization. They arrived in Port-au-Prince in January 21 at 11:20 a.m. Sheriff Paul VanBlarcum accompanied the men to Haiti to assess the mission objectives and met with Save the Children managerial personnel. He was back in New York at 7 p.m. the same day.

The three volunteers were tasked with food distribution efforts and incident command structure assistance.

Their deployment is initially expected to last 21 days. They have been granted leave by the sheriff and avenues are being pursued for reimbursement for Ulster County. All three men volunteered for the mission and offered the use of their earned vacation time.

“They are training to help people,” said the sheriff. “For them, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to respond quickly and make an impact saving lives.

The sheriff’s office has had over 30 members volunteer to go to Haiti to assist in the effort with many others offering financial assistance

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That will be the most work Pollacco has done in YEARS!

Anonymous said...

Is Paul moving to Haiti?

Cap'n V

Anonymous said...

County resources are spread thin enough and you send three county employees to Haiti? They did volunteer but it was not without pay! I hope all county residents can write off the tax money spent as a charitable donation! The Sheriff should have sent the Undersheriff, maybe we would have gotten lucky and he wouldn't have been able to come back. Oh thats right, he wouldn't do that because no one would be here to run the office. Come on now we all know VanBlarcum doesn't really run the Sheriffs office!

Anonymous said...

i would like to know why the two comments i wrote were not posted?????