ShelterBox formed a partnership with Sean Penn’s camp, although I am not sure how many boxes/tents were received there.   Most likely many of the people that Frank McKinney saw in the streets of Port Au Prince just after the quake ended up at this camp.

We did not see Sean Penn in Haiti, but we met all his people and walked through the big tent that the Doctors were staying in.   This refugee camp is very organized and is located on edge of Port Au Prince.

Click on Link for Article in Vanity Fair about Sean Penn and his work in Haiti.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/hunkered-down-in-haiti-with-sean-penn-humanitarian.html

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

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

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.

It’s midday in Port-au-Prince and the sun is beating down from a cloudless sky.

It’s good news, another day without clouds means another day without rain.  But it won’t last.  Everybody knows the rainy season is now only a few weeks away, and a million people have no proper shelter.

A park on the edge of Port-au-Prince is sprouting what look like giant white field mushrooms.   They are actually large white tents, hundreds of them.  It’s the first proper tent encampment to be built since the earthquake. Along a high concrete wall workers are digging latrines, and building shower blocks.

In a few days from now 3,000 refugees from the centre of Port-au-Prince will start moving in here. But they will be the lucky few. 

Watch the video in this link to see what ShelterBox is doing   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8488728.stm

‘Huge number’

Despite repeated calls from everyone – from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to Haitian President Rene Preval – only a few thousand tents have so far arrived in Haiti.

Mr Gascon says there are simply not enough tents

“The priority for flights has been given to bringing in food and medical supplies,” says Christopher Gascon from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

He is in charge of building the mushroom tent camp. He has 40,000 more tents on their way from Panama, but by ship, not by air. And even when those do arrive, they will not be nearly enough.

It seems extraordinary, but so vast are Haiti’s needs that there are simply not enough of the right sort of tents in the world right now to house all the refugees.

“We are talking about a huge number of tents,” says Mr Gascon.  “These sort of tents are not widely available. They will have to be made, ordered from China. If you want 200,000 tents now its not going to happen, they are not there.”

‘Ghost’ camp

There is also chaos and confusion. The aftermath of every natural disaster is chaotic. But Haiti is especially so.  Every aid agency and non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the world seems to have poured in to Port-au-Prince.

In the UN compound next to the airport clean-cut young men and women strut around in T-shirts proclaiming “Scientologist Volunteers”.

Reconstruction: Haitian style

In a bar across the street a group of Belgian men are drinking beer. Outside their large white lorry has a banner draped across it with the name of their own tiny environmental NGO.

“We want to help, but the World Food Programme says they already have enough water trucks,” they tell me. But if the UN base is chaotic, it’s nothing to the Haitian government compound.

It’s housed in an old concrete police station just down the road. The car park is crammed with large four-wheel drives jostling for position and hooting loudly.

We manage to track down Charles Clermont, the Haitian official charged with building the mass tent cities that will supposedly house the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Port-au-Prince.  “We started work the day after the earthquake,” he assures me, “the first camp will be up and running within the next few days.”  Surprised, I ask him where it is.  “It is on the outskirts of the city, there is running water and there will be electricity and spaces, it will be operational within a few days,” Mr Clermont says.

Intrigued, I take down the details of the location and head out of town. The place is an empty stretch of highway that runs out to the mountains north of Port-au-Prince.  One thing is immediately clear, there is no camp. Instead on a stony hillside we come across one of the most extraordinary sites I have ever seen.  Hundreds and hundreds of people, camping in the open.

‘No help’

As soon as I get out of the car a crowd surrounds me. One young man speaks English.  I ask him where he sleeps.  “On the ground,” he answers, pointing to a patch of dirt further up the hill.  I ask him if he has had any help, any food or water.  “No,” he says, “we have nothing.”

Further on I find a young mother and her seven children squatting in a tiny shack they have fashioned out of sticks and old blankets. One of her children has a huge bandage around his hand.  “He had two fingers amputated after the quake,” the mother says.

Nearby Salnar Devoisie is lying on a makeshift bed. Her daughter is platting her mass of grey hair. There is a white bandage around the stump of her left leg. “I was trapped in the rubble of my home for three days. When the Israeli doctors got me out they said we will have to chop it off or you will die,” she says.  As we talk she rubs her hand against her chest as if in pain.  “It is gas. I haven’t eaten for four days.”

Despite the massive response from the outside world these people are still waiting for help to arrive.  And for nearly a million Haitians the coming night will be another night spent in the open.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8488728.stm

Response Team member Lasse Petersen said: ‘We agreed with the local community that the initial tent allocation would be for families with pregnant women and families with newborns.

‘Port au Prince is overflowing with encampments of people sleeping out without basic shelter. The demand remains enormous, but with the help of our donors, ShelterBox has flown 5 aircraft and over 3,000 ShelterBoxes to aid those left homeless by the quake.

‘In the hospitals, orphanages and local communities we are making a difference and thousands of more boxes are en route.’

For more information please visit http://www.shelterbox.org

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#

ShelterBox tents are being used by hospitals in Port au Prince to provide emergency shelter for post surgery patients in Haiti’s capital.

The first ShelterBoxes to arrive in the country have been immediately utilised by doctors in desperate need of equipment to help treat huge numbers of injured Haitians.

The Response Team in Haiti are facing huge challenges on a daily basis. Large aftershocks were felt first thing this morning Hatian time but the team report they are all ok.

ShelterBox Response Team member Mark Pearson, who has been in Port au Prince since Thursday, said: ‘The first tents are being used by Bernard Mews hospital in Port au Prince. The tents have been immediately put into use by doctors for post surgery patients. 

To read the entire article & learn more about SHELTERBOX, or donate to ShelterBox, click on the link below.

http://shelterbox.org/news.php?id=236

Click  to DONATE to Shelterbox

There is a short window of opportunity to search for and rescue those trapped in the rubble, as well as treat those who have been critically injured. We have a team of doctors, paramedics, firefighters and other team members who have been specially trained in search, rescue and extraction techniques in natural disaster circumstances.

Frank and I want to sincerely thank you if you have donated to this emergency effort. If you haven’t, and would like to do so, please visit our donate page: http://www.frank-mckinney.com/donate.aspx, or call Anne at 561.722.3950 to make your donation over the phone.

Click here if Video arrow doesn’t work

Click here if Video arrow doesn’t work

This certainly is an unbudgeted expenditure for our Caring House Project Foundation, yet we are called to act on God’s great “tap moments” as the Haiti earthquake disaster has presented.

There are few who have been cleared to fly directly into Port au Prince, the capital city of Haiti, and the epicenter of the destruction. We are grateful to those who have worked so hard to make this happen.

We encourage you to come out to see Frank and his team off today (1/14) at 2:30pm at the Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport, 5525 NW 15th Ave. 33309, Suite 150. If you want to bring a donation check, I’m sure Frank would be glad to accept it personally from you.

As Frank will be gone for an indefinite period of time, and won’t have access to email or phone, please be sure to contact me instead of Frank at 561.756.0335, or kimberley@frank-mckinney.com.

Please either circulate this email to your list, or send: http://www.frank-mckinney.com/blog.asp?article=168, as it contains the same information. Regardless of when you read this, please support Frank’s effort. It will take years, perhaps decades to rebuild Haiti, and I can assure you that Frank and the Caring House Project Foundation will be there for the duration.

We will be sure to post a summary report when Frank returns. Thank you again for your support.

Kimberley Trombly-Burmeister

Executive Director

Caring House Project Foundation

www.frank-mckinney.com

A magnitude-7.0 earthquake has hit the impoverished Caribbean country of Haiti, bringing down a hospital and sparking a tsunami alert.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centred 15 kilometres southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

It struck at 4:53 p.m. EST and originated about 10 kilometres below ground, the agency said.

The quake also prompted a tsunami watch for Haiti, as well as Cuba, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.

Read the rest of the Haiti earthquake article here.