Aerial view of the disaster area
The volunteers' first glimpse of where they will be working.
Veolia employees, its clients and partners were extremely upset by the aftermath of the tsunami which occurred on the 26 December and which destroyed large swathes of the South East Asia coastline.They felt strongly that they should show their solidarity with the affected communities.
The emergency response unit, Veolia Waterforce, immediately received requests to become involved from the French Ministries for Foreign Affairs and Health, as well as from the Red Cross, with whom they have partnered to provide emergency relief since 1998.
Waterforce was set up by Veolia Water 7 years ago to provide emergency assistance as quickly as possible anywhere in the world by sending experts and equipment to where it is needed to assist local authorities in dealing with the crisis.These experts are employees who have volunteered and who have been trained in providing emergency assistance. Since 2004 employees from other Divisions of the Group have also volunteered and it is now known as Veolia Waterforce.
Staff in Paris took immediate steps to organize the first teams of volunteers, all trained in providing emergency assistance, and to arrange for the transportation of necessary equipment.
This photo journal reports on the human angle of this major experience in the lives of the volunteers from Veolia Water (engineers, logisticians, hydrogeologists, interpreters, wastewater treatment operatives etc.) from African, Asian and European subsidiaries.
Their first sighting of the disaster area was through the window of their airplane "as if the area had been bombarded, erased from the map".