AN HEROIC soldier credited with saving countless lives after the Haiti earthquake has scooped a prestigious award for his part in the relief mission.

Captain Christopher Heyworth, 27, had a leading role in the UK Government-funded Operation Panlake.

He has now received the Annual Engineer And Logistic Staff Corps Award in recognition of his actions and cond-uct following the disaster.

Shortly after the massive earthquake hit Haiti on January 12 last year, Capt Heyworth, from Laneshawbridge, near Colne, was asked to take command of a 40-strong Port Task Group on a supply ship tasked with carrying aid to the Caribbean island.

The ship, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Largs Bay, set sail across the Atlantic on February 3 and arrived in Haiti around two weeks later.

The earthquake killed 220,000 people and left 1.5million homeless.

Capt Heyworth, of the 17th Port and Maritime Regiment of the Royal Logistic Corps, described the island as res-embling ‘one giant demolition site’ when he flew over in a helicopter.

He said the devastation made him realise how important it was to get aid to those worst affected.

He said his biggest challenge was trying to reach people in the fishing village of Anse-au-Veux, which was cut off by road.

The ship had been asked to deliver 300,000 ready-to-eat meals, 31.5 tonnes of rice, 6.5 tonnes of beans, 210 boxes of corn soya blend, 114 boxes of vegetable oil and 13 bags of salt.

After viewing the area from the air, Capt Heyworth said he was convinced the ship could sail up a narrow waterway to reach the village, despite high sand banks and strong tides.

However, when the time came to carry out the operation the water level had dropped by four feet, leaving him with a difficult decision to make.

He said: “When I saw the water level had dropped my heart sank, but I decid-ed to go ahead with it anyway and luck-ily it paid off as we made it through.”

Capt Heyworth’s decision and actions meant enough supplies to feed up to 20,000 people for two weeks were delivered.

Working with the village priest, Capt Heyworth set up a human chain, incl-uding his team of soldiers and local people to move vital supplies ashore.

The former QEGS schoolboy said: “Making that decision was my biggest challenge.

"My hand may have been forced a bit because I didn’t want to go back on something I said would be fine.

“It took three or four weeks to unload the food and thousands of people would have benefited from that, which was great.

"That was what I envisaged I would be doing before we arrived and it was certainly what I enjoyed doing the most.”

When the ship arrived in Port-au-Prince, the island’s capital Capt Heyworth’s first job was to co-ordinate the unloading of its cargo, which included vehicles and building materials.

After completing the day-long operation, which the former QEGS schoolboy described as ‘routine’, his team was faced with the ‘trickier’ job of loading thousands of tonnes of supplies from the United Nations World Food Programme into bags and onto the ship, ready to be taken to other locations on the island.

Capt Heyworth, of the 17th Port and Maritime Regiment of the Royal Logistic Corps, said hundreds of Haitians helped with the loading operation, which took days to complete.

The ship sailed to the Port of Gonaives, around 70 nautical miles North West of Port Au Prince, where Capt Heyworth and his men unloaded 202 tonnes of rice, 180 tonnes of peas and 85,000 ready-to-eat meals for families left devastated by the disaster.

The earthquake measured 7.0 on the Richter Scale and caused destruction across the island.

Capt Heyworth, whose family still live in Pendle, said he was ‘chuffed’ to receive the award.

The total estimated cost of rebuilding in Haiti is expected to be around 11.5billion US dollars.