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UPDATE MONDAY 8:30 p.m. MST January 18 2010 All children and staff from Cazeau orphanage have been evacuated to Williamson and arrived late this afternoon. They drove out in a convoy with the women and children singing to keep the children occupied. The following is a brief summary of what Susie explained about the trip into Port-au-Prince to rescue the children at the orphanage. All of this is being documented and still photos and video interviews. “We saw mass graves alongside a number of the roads with bulldozers filling the graves with bodies to overflowing. While we are accustomed to seeing small children naked in the streets, we saw many naked adults in the streets or sitting on the sides of the road who were either robbed or ran from their homes in the middle of the night to escape the catastrophe. The devastation is everywhere. The city looks like a war zone, neighborhood after neighborhood. The children and staff at the Cazeau orphanage were so overjoyed to see us that they started singing. When we got back in Williamson we were overjoyed that relief supplies were literally right behind the convoy of vehicles. The remaining staff are all thrilled to know that they still have jobs, although most of the staff lost family members and have been burying loved ones all week. Although the children at Williamson have had bottled water, because the generators were not working they have not bathed for at least a week and they were filthy, dusty, covered with cuts, and scared to sleep inside the buildings. They have started playing again, we are getting them cleaned up, and they are smiling and going inside the buildings. The smell of cooking food is incredible when you are this hungry.” Of particular concern are the feeding programs in the north of the country (Paulette and Phaeton) where we feed a minimum of 1,300 people a day sometimes over 2,000 a day. We are in urgent need of someone to donate the cost of buying a 4WD diesel truck so that we can provide supplies to the north. We have arranged shipping from Miami if we can get the vehicle purchased in the next day or two. The vessel will leave the Port of Miami this coming Monday and we received news today that the government has opened the port in Saint Marc, which is a reasonable distance from Williamson with passable roads. Mde Chenet sounded much more upbeat when we spoke to her today. Here is her story of her eyewitness report of the earthquake: “I was going to deliver an invitation to the grand opening of the Williamson project to the owner of the Villa Creole, located at the top of the mountain above Port au Prince known as Petitonville. This is the location of the best hotels in Port-au-Prince, including the Hotel Montana and the El Rancho. I was thirsty, and when I arrived I gave the invitation to the owner of the Villa Creole and then decided to get a lemonade. I sat at a table in the restaurant area, but I got up from the table when my phone rang, so I was walking away from the table when the earthquake first hit. Within an instant I turned around and the ceiling collapsed and a concrete slab fell on the table where I was just sitting moments before. At that point everyone in the restaurant jumped up and ran outside the covered restaurant area to the swimming pool area. The earthquake was shaking and moving everything, the swimming pool tilted up to a point where there was no water at one end of the pool. Trees started falling and everyone ran toward the parking lot and out the entrance of the Villa Creole. I looked up and saw the El Rancho hotel collapse right in front of me, so hard I felt a blast of wind. There is a panoramic view over Port au Prince from this location, and it was like slow motion as dust began rising from the earthquake all over the city. It rose to the point where the sun was shining through it and turned the color to blood red. As I looked over the city through the dust, the red started to turn to ashen color. I was frantic and stopped a young man on a motorscooter and paid him to give me a ride. We had to maneuver around debris and as I came down from Petitonville I could see the frozen expressions on the faces of people trapped or killed in the rubble and debris that seemed to be everywhere I looked. Those images will never leave my mind.” We urgently need cash donations. We need to buy one and ideally two heavy duty trucks for delivery relief supplies to our feeding programs in Paulette and Phaeton. We can buy supplies locally. We cannot accept supplies yet. B. Joseph Krabacher MERCY & SHARING |