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.’

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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#

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

• 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