Updates on conditions in Saltadere and Hinche

Approximately 4:45 PM Tuesday January 12th a major earthquake struck Haiti centered in the Port-au-Prince (P-a-P) area. The following are reports we have received from our friends in Haiti, we have included mention of places we have visited.

As of 7 PM Wednesday 1/13 we have the following reports regarding our area and friends in Haiti:

No damage or injury in Saltadere or Hinche ( state capital )

Pere Blot is Ok and traveled today from Saltadere to Hinche

Richard Joseph and family are OK in Hinche

Brother Cos is at the orphanage in Hinche, and he is fine.

Cell phone service in the Saltadere area is out

Bishop of Richmond will order a collection for Haiti Relief to be taken at all parishes on the weekend of 23-24. However at St. Thomas this will be taken up on Sunday January 16-17 as well as Sunday 23-24

1/16/2010 from Paul Harnois, chairman of our committee

Hi All
I have just now been able to make contact for the first time with Pere Blot since the sad day of the earthquake.
He informed me that he was fine but that he had lost 3 nieces in Pot-au-Prince.
I informed Fr. Steven of this tragedy and he will mention it to Fr. Scordo and they will include them in the prayer intentions this evening and tomorrow.
His other need at the moment is for funds for food for the people in Saltadere.

Our prayers are with him and his loss and for the people of Haiti.
Paul

 

From Hinche Richard Joseph writes on 1/14:

As I told you Yesterday on Telephone ,the central Plateau is safe but the capital :Port-Au-Prince is almost destroyed.For Example :the National Palace,The Cathedral,Some of the Ministries,The Parliament Office,etc. Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot is died in his office at the Archbishop's House'.

I met with Fr Blot This Morning is Ok.

We are sorry for this situation too much people died and some parents went to Port-Au-Prince to pick up their Family and Takecare in Hospital.

The Hospital in Hinche and Cange are crowded with People coming From Port-Au-prince.

Have a nice Day.

Blessings.

From Port-au-Prince:

 

Report about Paul Farmers emergency efforts 1/18/10

 

January 13th, 2010

In P-a-P the CRS offices were shaken, with some damage to the compound walls, but there were no injuries in the building. Two CRS staff members remain unaccounted for. Communication with Haiti remains very difficult.

We have heard that the Daughters of Charity and the Salesian Sisters who run schools in PaP are ok.

Sadly, among the hundreds of thousands of people killed, the Archbishop of P-a-P was one, he met with our group in the fall, and a picture of this meeting is on our site.

 

 

 

 

Patrice Schwermer - Regional Coordinator OJP

Commonwealth Catholic Charities reports: 1-13-2010

Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince found dead under the rubble of the archbishops' residence and Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican's apostolic nuncio in Haiti, told the Vatican missionary news agency Fides: "Port-au-Prince is completely devastated. The cathedral and the archbishop's residence, all the big churches, all the seminaries are reduced to rubble."

From Hospice St. Joseph:
Geri O’Hare, Board Chair for Hospice St Joseph said they have not been able to contact anyone.

· From Matthew 25:

"Matt 25 cooked up 4 big pots of soup for the people coming for treatment, and served as a triage and treatment center. We were able to climb over the fallen bookcases and shelves and retrieve a lot of meds and supplies we had in our depot

Sr Mary, Vivian and our 6 guests performed superbly in treating many injured. Eventually, 3 Haitian doctors showed up, I think when they heard we had supplies.

Worked till about two in the morning. We were also one of the few houses to have power with our inverters and batteries, so we set up 3 o4 4 lights on the soccer field to help with the treatment.

The hospitals are either badly damaged or destroyed, and have stopped taking patients as they are overwhelmed."

· From LaGonave initial reports from our twinning relationship report that there has not been too much damage.

 

A report from a nurse from part of a party of 9 physicians and nurses, most from University of Iowa and Wake Forest

January 19, 2010 @ 7:06 PM

Flew out of Ft. Lauderdale on a private jet around 7:30. Only had to circle around the airport for a few minutes and landed [in Port au Prince] around 9:20. The airport is crazy. It's like flying onto a very active military base. Enormous military jets everywhere, blackhawks and various helicopters taking off and landing every minute or two, and tents everywhere. We packed our bags onto Save [the Children] trucks and made it to Leogane pretty quick. The roads are fine. PAP is bad, but most of the bodies have been removed. Places where houses completely collapsed and bodies are crushed underneath the smell is pretty horrid. Leogane is unreal. It's completely flattened.
Maybe 10 houses in the entire city are standing without damage. The main streets are so damaged that you can't get around with a car. All electric lines are down, and most of the city smells pretty bad from the bodies decaying under the piles of rubble. The entire town is homeless and is gathered under makeshift tents in just about any open space.
There are several thousand people sleeping on the ground outside the nursing school.

Today I just wandered around reconnecting with people. Met up with John and Suzi [Parker, hospital guest house coordinators], went out to Darbonne, set up our tents, got the docs set up. Probs coordinating with Medecins Sans Frontier....So there's a meeting tonight between our docs and theirs to try and work out logistics.

Now it's dark and pitch black outside. The Filariasis guest house has a generator, so there's some light, but we're going to eat our peanut butter and crackers and crash. Tomorrow will be busy - there are insane amounts of supplies being dropped in that need to be sorted and the docs need to be organized.

January 20 @ 6:57 AM

Our wake-up call this morning was a pretty decent sized aftershock at 6am. Having been indoctrinated from infancy to react to earthquakes, it didn't actually faze me much and within a second I was out of my tent (why I don't know since we're in the middle of a field, but maybe I was unconsciously looking for a doorway??). The whole town started wailing though. Tensions are so high. The aftershock was 6.1, and sounds like it was located about 36 miles from PAP- maybe closer to ti goave?

January 20 @ 3:53 PM:

I walked through town today and counted: Japanese crew; Swiss Doctors Without Borders (MSF); Swede MSF; Canadian MSF; our crew; another group from Massachusetts; HSC docs [local doctors from Leogane] and another mystery group on their way. I sent the Massachusetts group to Grand Goave. Some of the MSF people went to Grand Goave as well (it was the epicenter for the big aftershock we got this morning). The Japanese are incredible - they have their own operating room including an x-ray machine and brought their own ice cream makers. We're all jealous.

The [air strip] "runway" (the alternate [paved] route through Leogane) is also pretty hectic. This morning Jean Marc and I played air traffic control when 2 helicopters and a plane all wanted to land at the same time. Shipments are flying in about every 30 minutes - unfortunately there's not much coordination about where the stuff is supposed to go.
Obviously we know about the stuff destined for the nursing school, but random stuff is being dropped (including medical personnel) and we can't figure out what to do with it. It's totally chaotic.

The UN is trying to distribute tents and tarps, but they haven't quite mastered distribution yet. Within seconds they're overpowered and chaos ensues. Jn. Marc and Nathan are off to rescue the latest UN distributors as I type.

Lots of pretty incredible medical sights. One young girl was essentially scalped. Somehow our docs managed to stretch her skin over her scalp again and stitch her up even though 7 days have passed. Lots of pretty severe broken bones and crush injuries. Other than helping with air traffic, part of my job today has been to organize all the shipments of meds and finding supplies for the docs. Save the Children also showed up today so I got to see Kathryn for a few minutes.

Houses with the most severe stench of decaying bodies are starting to be bull-dozed. So hopefully the stench will subside within a week. It's pretty overwhelming in some areas.

Still trying to track people down. Since everyone's house was destroyed, everyone is sleeping in various fields and it's hard to find them...One of our monitrices was killed but it's impossible to hear about anyone outside of the immediate Leogane city. We have no idea how everyone in the mountains fared.

Information from other sources: One of the doctors on the team with Cathy reports that:
.....90% of the buildings have just been flattened. There are the "tent cities" of the refugees. He said some of them have sheets for shelter, and some have used metal to make shelters. He could hear the Haitians
singing hymns as we spoke. They have a general surgeon, and an
orthopedic surgeon came in on a helicopter this afternoon. Thanks to Nathan and Cathy, the team has plenty of clean water. 10 large buckets of Gadyen Dlo [water purification system]. So all is well tonight.
Hopefully they will all get a good night's sleep and be ready for a long day of work tomorrow.