{"id":81,"date":"2020-03-16T08:31:22","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T08:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/?p=81"},"modified":"2020-03-16T23:34:18","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T23:34:18","slug":"special-announcement-important-please-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/english\/special-announcement-important-please-read\/","title":{"rendered":"SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT \u2013 IMPORTANT \u2013 PLEASE READ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To contain the spread of COVID-19, yesterday the government of Ecuador announced that it will prohibit all non-essential travel between communities as of Thursday, 19 March. All businesses are ordered closed, except for essential services. This decree designates refueling as an essential service, but we do not yet know if this means all gas stations will remain open. We must plan accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>The crisis management committee is working on several fronts to deal with this development.<\/p>\n<h5>Immediate actions:<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>Chantal Cloutier is a retired L-Col, RCAF and former staff officer to the Minister of National Defence. Ms. Cloutier is personal friends with Canada\u2019s defence attach\u00e9 responsible for Ecuador. Ms. Cloutier contacted him last night and explained our situation. Our defence attach\u00e9 understands it to be a humanitarian crisis in the making. Our defence attach\u00e9 is now working directly with the Canadian embassy in Quito and with Global Affairs Canada. The Government of Canada considers our situation to be a strategic crisis and will use whatever channels are available to help us. Chantal will speak later today with a senior representative of the Canadian embassy.<\/li>\n<li>During the health emergency, CNEL has been ordered by the government of Ecuador to not cut power to any household or community, for any reason, including non-payment. Brigitte Mahe will contact CNEL and Defensoria del Pueblo today to plead our unique circumstances and request immediate resumption of electrical services to the community.<\/li>\n<li>James Whittall will call Gordon Poole at Hola Ecuador to discuss what Hola can offer as immediate aid.<\/li>\n<li>Our Ecuadorian neighbours have personal contacts with local, provincial, and federal governments. We will meet with them today to see how they can help.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>Next:<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>We will organize teams to begin stockpiling gasoline.<\/li>\n<li>We will organize teams to drive people who do not own cars to grocery stores. If you own a vehicle, we urge you to buy enough preserved food, water, and other goods to last three weeks. If you know someone who needs help with food or other goods, please see to their needs.<\/li>\n<li>We will ensure that water delivery, an essential service, continues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a complex set of circumstances and we ask that you let us do our work. Please, do not contact embassies (unless it\u2019s for your own personal reasons), government officials, or anyone you think might help. We understand that your intentions are sincere. However, we cannot afford to complicate this time-sensitive situation while our team conducts its outreach initiatives.<\/p>\n<p>If you know any official who may be able to help, please send us their contact information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The crisis management committee is working on several fronts to deal with the upcoming quarantine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameswhittall.com\/msj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}