A DAY IN HAITI » Haiti earthquake

Four months after the Earthquake

admin — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:09:13 +0000

Douglas Doebler Visits Haiti With Hope To Haiti Just 4 Months After The January 2010 Earthquake.

Locations visited are Port Au Prince, Bambou Laporte, Gonaives and Saint Marc’s Haiti.

Music from Road To Fondwa http://www.Fondwa.org

ShelterBox distributes tents in Jacmel, Haiti

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:34:48 +0000

ShelterBox Response Team members Tom Newman and Greg Rogers have been distributing tents in Jacmel. They distributed 250 ShelterBoxes in the area which is on the south of the island.

ShelterBox Head of Operations, John Leach said: ‘We are continuing to spread our net beyond Port au Prince . A newly arrived two man team comprising of Greg Rogers (UK) and Tom Newman (UK) headed south to Jacmel. They’ve wasted no time in assessing needs and setting up the first camps. Tom, who is on his first deployment, has been doing a great job in running logistics from Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and now has his chance to get out in the field.’

Please visit www.shelterbox.org to find out ways you can support ShelterBox’s work around the globe.

Frank McKinney’s Haiti Earthquake Experience

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:13:48 +0000

By the time we departed Haiti on Sunday evening, 52 search-and-rescue operations with 2,200 operatives had set up camp at the end of the runway at PAP, the Port-au-Prince airport. Thirty-nine countries had mobilized to bring out survivors of the devastating earthquake.

The “dream team” I assembled had arrived three days earlier, anxious to get to work because the survival window for victims still trapped under the rubble was closing. We were the tenth group to sign in with the United Nations, and for the next three days we were embedded deep into the epicenter of the disaster. Our extremely well-qualified team of medical and search-and-rescue personnel (three from Colorado and six from South Florida) not only cut through concrete and steel but also through the red tape and bureaucracy associated with such a massive effort.

We saved four lives and worked with teams from Peru, Nicaragua, Jordan and Spain. Two of the survivors we rescued had been trapped behind crumbled walls and a cadaver in a collapsed building, one had spent 90 hours under the debris, and another had been in surgery when the quake shook the hospital’s foundations and crushed him under its ruins.

While we were there, a total of 43 people were freed, alive, from the wreckage. That means our ragtag team was involved in nearly 10 percent of the total number of rescues during those two days!

I’d like to briefly share with you what happened: who went, who worked with us there, what we did, what we saw, the real truth from the inside. But first I want to tell you what’s next.

Already, support has been tremendous. From financial donations to contributions of time to critical supplies and equipment that were obtained for use in this special mission, we’ve received aid from hundreds of generous individuals and organizations since the quake hit. Anyone who took action, who didn’t just sit and watch and say, “How sad,” has made a meaningful, measurable difference for the Haitian people.

You know who you are, and I want to say thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Please visit our donate page: http://www.frank-mckinney.com/donate.aspx, call Anne at 561.722.3950 to make your donation over the phone, or mail to P.O. Box 388 Boynton Beach, FL 33425. Also remember, if you purchase any of my bestselling books, all proceeds go to Caring House Project Foundation: http://www.frank-mckinney.com/books.asp

For more about the Frank McKinney and the Rescue Team click on Frank’s Blog

http://www.frank-mckinney.com/blog.asp?article=168

We’re committed to continuing to draw attention to Haiti in the coming weeks, months and years. When the hype dies down, the people there will still need our help. Now that the world’s eyes have turned to this country, which even before this disaster was the poorest in the western hemisphere, we want to hold that focus for as long as we can. So many people’s lives, and the next generation of Haitians, depend upon it.

As a charity with an ongoing interest in improving living conditions in Haiti, the Caring House Project Foundation will be there for the duration, just as we have been for the past six years, master planning communities, building self-sufficient villages and providing emergency relief.

Aid Groups Focus on Haiti’s Homeless

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:19:21 +0000

By RAY RIVERA and DAMIEN CAVE

Published: January 21, 2010

JACMEL, Haiti — Haiti has approved plans for more than a dozen sprawling tent cities in and around Port-au-Prince, the first step in an epic relocation effort that could reshape the country as up to one million people displaced by the earthquake find new places to live.

Damon Winter/The New York Times / A burning trash pile on the edge of a tent city set up on a car dealership parking lot in Port-au-Prince. Haitian and international officials are planning both immediate and permanent shelter.

Here in one of the cities hardest hit by the earthquake — as in Port-au-Prince, the capital — the housing needs are acute, and demand for shelter has intensified. Officials with the Haitian government and the United Nations said Thursday that they were moving as quickly as possible to establish organized camps, with water, food and health care, before the rainy season starts to peak in May.

“A lot of these people have maybe a sheet on four sticks over their heads right now,” said Niurka Piñeiro, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration. “It’s really urgent that we get these tents so we can provide a little better cover from the elements.”

Click on link to view more photos and read entire article, Courtesy of The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/world/americas/22haiti.html?ref=americas#

Haiti’s cultural core suffers in Jacmel

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:26:13 +0000

Jacmel, Haiti (Courtesy of CNN) By Soledad O’Brien and Rose Arce, CNN January 20, 2010 9:28 a.m. EST

Much was lost in the town of Jacmel, Haiti’s cultural center.

The nation’s only film school has lost two buildings. The huge, colorful paper mache floats for Carnival, just 10 days away, are crushed. The mountains of sheet music for the classes at Ecole Musique are scattered in the rubble of a street named La Berenthe, the labyrinth. It’s estimated 10 percent of the town’s residents have perished.

And with them they took a country’s film festival, its music studios, the paintings and masks that draw tourists and Haitians to this seaside town of 40,000.

Left behind are crushed limbs and brain injuries, nursed in an open-air hospital that replaced the real one. Cuban doctors had been working with Haitians when the earthquake hit, and they have continued their collaboration outside.

“Where there is life, there is hope,” says Dr. Silda Del Torro of Cuba while standing over a 4-year-old girl who has drifted in and out of consciousness.

Click here to read rest of the article courtesy of CNN http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/19/obrien.haiti.jacmel/index.html

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Jacmel, seaside town of 40,000 about hour from Port-au-Prince, is Haiti’s cultural capital
An estimated 10 percent of the town’s residents were killed in the quake
The town has also lost its cultural buildings, paintings and masks that drew tourists
Young filmmakers put skills to work, get the word out of Jacmel’s plight

53 Haitian Orphans Are Airlifted to U.S.

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:59:13 +0000

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and SEAN D. HAMILL

Published: January 19, 2010

MIAMI — A group of 53 Haitian orphans landed in Pittsburgh on Tuesday morning, the first wave to arrive after the United States loosened its policy on visa requirements to expedite Americans’ adoptions of parentless children living in the post-earthquake ruins.

But the new policy, announced late Monday, affects only 900 children whom the Haitian government had already identified as orphans, and whom adoption agencies had matched with couples in the United States.

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press

Tens of thousands of children are believed to have been orphaned in the quake, and their fate remains unclear, aid groups and United Nations officials say.

Click on link to read the rest of the article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/world/americas/20orphans.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss courtesy of The New York Times

Buried in Haiti rubble, U.S. dad wrote goodbyes

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:57:12 +0000

But with iPhone info, he treated his injuries and was rescued after 65 hours.

Just had to post this remarkable story about Dan Woolley. This story really hit home as I have been in the same elevator at the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince. I was (am) scheduled to go there for my 4th visit in February.

By Mike Celizic

TODAYshow.com contributor

updated 8:48 a.m. ET, Tues., Jan. 19, 2010

The words on the pages of the plain black notebook are written in a semi-scrawl, punctuated by smears of blood — stark evidence of the desperation in which they were written.

Sitting with his wife, Christina, in Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, Dan Woolley showed the notebook to TODAY’s Meredith Vieira via satellite hookup Tuesday. Trapped for 65 hours under tons of wreckage in the lobby of his hotel by Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake and knowing he could die, Woolley had written notes to his two young boys and his wife.

Click on link to read the rest of this remarkable story! http://www.today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34933053/ns/today-today_people/

Haiti six days later

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:56:23 +0000

Thanks to Alan Taylor of The Boston Globe for sharing this photo journal

Haiti remains a place of profound need, anguish, desperation and danger, with a few glimmers of hope and slowly growing capabilities to receive and distribute the international aid now flowing in. Sporadic looting, sometimes violent, was met with force by security oficials and ordinary citizens, resulting in a number of further deaths and injuries. The tenuous security situation has led to at least one temporary evacuation of a medical facility, to protect the care-givers. Despite the long time since the earthquake, at least five people were pulled from the rubble alive this weekend, including a young girl trapped inside a supermarket who was fortunately surrounded by food, and survived on fruit snacks.

Click here for Photos of Haiti 6 days later

Frank McKinney and Caring House Search and Rescue Team Back from Haiti

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:41:43 +0000

Frank McKinney and Caring House Search & Rescue Team Back returned back from Haiti Sunday Night – watch this video to see their results! We are very proud of this rescue team!

For more about the rescue, click here.

If you haven’t made a donation and would still like to do so, please visit the Caring House Project donation page http://www.frank-mckinney.com/donate.aspx
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Haiti Earthquake Aid Effort

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:59:37 +0000

Haiti Earthquake Aid Effort Request From Frank Mckinney – Caring House Project Foundation

To those who make things happen,

Our Caring House Project Foundation is in the process of planning an immediate and efficient response to the earthquake disaster in Haiti. CHPF’s villages and many more are devastated. Our plan will likely include securing a plane or planes to travel either direct to Haiti or to the Dominican Republic then drive to Haiti. If we are able to secure a large enough plane and proper ground transportation once we arrive, we will look to immediately gather the following in anticipation of an initial departure within the next 24-48 hours. Others to follow. The critical search and rescue window of opportunity is upon us:

1) Search, rescue and extraction equipment

2) Medical and triage supplies

3) Food, water and blankets

4) Communications (phone/video)

5) Manpower

6) Donations, http://www.frank-mckinney.com/donate.aspx. We will need to dip into CHPF’s reserves, or use monies set aside for new villages, in order to undertake this initiative. It will be costly, with the first response wave running in excess of $100,000.