Yarmouth mission group in Haiti says they are safe following earthquake

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

In a blog posting Wednesday morning, the team leader of a group of Yarmouth volunteers who are in Haiti as part of a volunteer mission says it was a restless night for the group as aftershocks continued to rock the country that was devastated Tuesday by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. “I want to thank everyone for your prayers,” wrote Gerry Rhyno. “It has been a very restless night. There have been at least two aftershocks around midnight and possibly more. It is very difficult to sleep when you’re waiting for the next tremor to come, and wondering how it will affect us.”

Everyone in the group is safe, although Rhyno says they felt the quake “quite strongly.” “Everyone cleared out of the house where we were relaxing after a day’s work. The house shook very visibly. Some of the walls around the compound appeared to move about two feet or some back and forth.”

The earthquake, the strongest to rock Haiti in 200 years, hit shortly before 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 12. News coming out of the country is that much of the capital city of Port-au-Prince has been destroyed and it is expected that casualties will be high. By early Wednesday afternoon reports were that tens of thousands, to perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people were killed in the earthquake.

It's been estimated that at least three million people in Haiti have been affected by the earthquake. The epicenter of the quake was just outside the capital city.

The Yarmouth group is in an area of Haiti about 150 kilometres from the capital city.

The Yarmouth group had been posting to the blog (which is linked through Yarmouth Wesleyan Church, http://haititeam2010.blogspot.com/) throughout the night and morning to let family and friends back home in Yarmouth know that everyone is okay.

Around mid-morning on Wednesday he posted an update on the group’s situation. The group is part of the HATS (Hands Across the Sea) Haiti Mission Team, which is in the country to help construct an apartment above a one-storey building on the compound that includes an orphanage and school. While they’re there, the group is also working and interacting with the children. “We've spent some time at the school checking for damage,” Rhyno reported on Wednesday. “From what we can see, we are going to need about $10,000 to do repairs to the school just to make it safe enough that children can come back to school.”

For the Yarmouth mission group, information about the quake aftermath continued to trickle in. Phone service, which is mostly cellular where the group is located, had been down since the earthquake. “Thankfully we have satellite-based Internet as well as television so are able to stay in touch and receive information,” said Rhyno.

Someone from the compound where the Yarmouth group is located did drive to Port-au-Prince to evaluate the situation. While the road to the capital was open, a majority of the buildings in the capital city were damaged or destroyed. “We've received several confirmations that the airport is operational,” said the blog. “The UN web sites are indicating that aid is beginning to arrive.”

The Yarmouth mission group has been successful in securing more diesel fuel for the generator, as well as fresh bottles of water for themselves. “So we are in excellent condition ourselves,” said information posted to the blog. “There appears to be little damage to homes in the immediate area. Southeast from here, we've had reports from a man who runs another orphanage that the poor area there has been quite badly damaged however. Everyone here is worried about friends and family in Port au Prince – no one is unaffected. With phone service down people are trying to make their way to the city to try to find their loved ones. Some reports are beginning to come in, unfortunately some of them tragic.”

The group from Yarmouth had arrived in Haiti on Jan. 5 and is slated to be there until Jan. 19. There are 14 people in the overall mission team, with the majority being from Yarmouth or having connections to Yarmouth.

According to the blog, aside from Rhyno members of the group from Yarmouth include Brian Roberts, Brian Bowers, Robert Comeau, Ben Churchill, Colton Colquhoun and Leonard Cottreau. Major Peter Rowe of the Salvation Army was also part of the mission group, but had left the country to head back to Canada just two hours before the earthquake hit.

Tim Newell, the son of Rev. Bill Newell, is also part of the group and is in the country with his wife Heidi, also originally from Yarmouth County, and their three children, Katie, 12; Aidan who turns eight next month and Erin who is six. The family now lives in Dartmouth.

Rev. Bill Newell, Tim’s father, said fortunately his family had heard that everyone in the Yarmouth group was safe at about the same time they heard the news about the earthquake, so they weren’t agonizing over any length of time waiting for news on the safety of their loved ones. “Their building shook quite badly, but only minor cracks,” Rev. Newell said Wednesday morning. He says he was wondering how his three grandchildren are coping with the situation. “Adults can talk it out, where kids tend to keep everything bottled inside. “They were quite excited to go to Haiti. Hopefully this will not have too much of a negative impact.”

Tim Newell had made the trip to Haiti last year with his father-in-law Gerry Rhyno and decided this year to bring the entire family. His father says his only concern prior to the trip had been health issues, given that malaria and other diseases are an issue for travelers to the country to be wary of. Still, Rev. Newell recognized that the mission work would be a wonderful experience for the family.

He talked about some of what his grandchildren had been doing during their first week in Haiti. “Erin took down a lot of craft supplies, she’s a little mother hen and she’s had the kids off in a corner doing craft time. Aidan was pitching in helping his grandfather with mortar and stuff,” says Newell. The family brought about 200 pairs of shoes to distribute to children and Katie had been responsible for sorting through the shoes.

Without the availability of phone service, family and friends have been corresponding with members of the group through emails, on Facebook and through the blog. Maria Bowers, wife of Brian Bowers of Arcadia, said Wednesday morning that she had heard from her husband through email. “He said that they were all okay,” she said.

This is her husband’s first trip with this mission group to Haiti, although he’s taken part in missions to other areas.

The HATS Haiti Mission Team is undertaking projects in Deschappelles, Haiti, which is about a four-hour drive from the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The roads have been described as atrocious at the best of times. The Yarmouth volunteer mission group, which is comprised of people from a variety of churches and backgrounds – is also working with the children at the orphanage and a community school. Some of the group has been to Haiti before on past missions, for others it is their first time.

Hands Across the Sea is a ministry run by Karen Huxter, whose sister Sandra MacDonald lives in Yarmouth and is married to Dickie MacDonald. He has been to Haiti five times on mission work with his sister-in-law. He says without anything as eventful as an earthquake, the trip is always a life changing experience. With an earthquake, no doubt the Yarmouth County residents will have gone through “the experience of a lifetime”, he says.

Dickie MacDonald says they had heard about the earthquake about an hour before receiving an email and seeing on the blog that everyone in the Yarmouth group was okay. Receiving that news, obviously, was a huge relief.

MacDonald describes the area where the group is doing its mission work as a compound that sits on a two-acre parcel of land that is enclosed by a barbed-razor wire fence with an armed guard at the entrance. The guard is needed to protect the compound from people who may try to loot it knowing there is food and other goods inside. Aside from the orphanage, there is also a school.

Outside of the compound there is a little community not too far away, and about a kilometer down the road is the only hospital in the region for hundreds of miles. It takes about an hour to drive to a store to get food. “That’s to get to a decent store, and it’s not a store by our standards,” he says.

Asked how the children end up in the orphanage, MacDonald says some people will got to the hospital and say they can’t care for their children, or they’ll just leave them on the doorstep. Some will go to the compound and say the same thing. “Some of the parents are really good and realize they can’t look after their children. Others will just let the kids starve to death. Karen knows if she does not take them, they will probably not survive,” MacDonald says about the work his sister-in-law does, and has been doing for about 15 years. “The first time I went down there it changed my life forever. You could not in any words describe the properties and the conditions in which people live in,” he adds. “The earthquake is going to be devastating.”

The Yarmouth group had spent about four months organizing and fundraising for this trip.

In one his blog posts, Rhyno writes, “We need lots of prayers.” Not only for mission groups that are in the country, he said, but for the Haitian people who are suffering through this disaster.

The Yarmouth group in Haiti said Wednesday that people seeking to donate disaster relief funds should contact one of the major aid agencies such as the Red Cross, as they are better positioned to deliver effective emergency aid and get the help to the region more quickly.

People can also make cheques out to the Hands Across the Sea Association and send them to: Hands Across the Sea, Box 101, Yarmouth, NS B5A 4B1.

LINK TO THE HATS HAITI MISSION BLOG:

http://haititeam2010.blogspot.com/