Approximately 12 hours ago another aftershock struck Haiti with nearly as much force as the first earthquake. The aftershock rated 6.1 on the Richter scale, whereas the earthquake eight days ago was 7.0 on the Richter scale. According to the USGS, it was located 30 miles west Southwest of Port-au-Prince. The damage was not as extensive, primarily because there is not much left to destroy. Rubble was shaken from already damaged buildings, and people were panicking and running through the streets again, but our US Team did not see any major additional damage that any of the Mercy and Sharing projects.

As most of you may already know Susie as on CNN this morning. For those of you who may not have seen the video clip, you can watch it on our site.

Unfortunately the death toll continues to mount. We received confirmation that one of our doctors was killed in the earthquake. We lost one of our best physical therapists. Three children were killed outside the Cite de Soliel project, and a number or caregivers or “mothers” as we call them, have been confirmed dead.

The 4-person security team that we have coming into the country should arrive on Friday, we arranged for the purchase of two trucks in the Dominican Republic, and on Friday they are going to replace the current US Team on the ground. We did receive disturbing misinformation from the officials at the public hospital (where we have the abandoned baby unit) that was reported several days ago. We had been told, and reported, the children had been removed successfully and placed in an undisclosed location. It turns out that information is incorrect and probably falsified, because at a meeting today at the public hospital the stories of the officials were inconsistent, and no one could or would actually confirm the “undisclosed” location. We fear the worse, but pray for best for the 32 children who were there before the earthquake.

We have begun the process of trying to restore security at the Cazeau project. The plan is to move the office there in one of the buildings that was not damaged, but we need to rebuild the walls and will need to bring in security because we will use that area as a staging point for distribution of relief supplies.

We have a number of needs for the Cazeau operations, including diesel generator, three laptop computers (new not used), funding for the installation of satellite Internet communications, an inverter system (which is used to charge batteries to run power so we do not have two run generators all the time), and we needed car or other transportation for the office staff. Mde Chenet will be working there, she is recovering from the shock of witnessing the earthquake, but told Susie: “We are sisters and will not quit as long as we have legs. God is reviving us.”

Through our incredible friends at Christian Alliance we have five 40’ shipping containers donated that have been converted to mobile medical clinics under a fully operational, and we need to raise the funds for the shipping costs to get them to Port-au-Prince as soon as possible. Shipping changes on almost a daily basis, currently the best route seems to be to deliver them to the port in Saint Marc and drive overland to Port-au-Prince. These mobile medical clinics can operate anywhere. In the meantime, we are going to be removing the mobile medical clinic from the Williamson project, because we have minimal injuries and most have been accommodated, and move it into Port-au-Prince where they are desperately short on medical care.

Through another one of our other friends, Mark Salter, we had received a full-size merely new ambulance, and we are redeploying it into Port-au-Prince to assist in the medical and relief efforts.

Everyone at Mercy and Sharing sends their love and thanks you for your generous support. We especially thank everyone for their prayers, we together have accomplished an incredible amount of work in the past eight days, but we know that the efforts will continue for years as Haiti attempts to rebuild its infrastructure and hopefully embarks on a new direction.

Once again, you can follow these updates and make donations online at our website www.haitichildren.org or through our Facebook page.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Earthquake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.