200 DR volunteers from 16 states serving in Haiti so far

By Mickey Noah

Fritz Wilson, state disaster relief director for the Florida Baptist Convention, looks over dozens of pictures drawn by children at First Baptist Church Academy, Alpharetta, Ga, and Cedar Glades Baptist Church, Mountain Pines, Ark.  Wilson, recently named as incident commander for Southern Baptist Disaster Relief in Haiti, will personally deliver the drawings to children in Haiti when he travels there later this week.   Photo by John Swain

“The Lord provided us all with an early morning wakeup call – a bed-shaking, chandelier-swinging, earth-rumbling aftershock that sent volunteers out of the Florida guest house,” said Tom Westerfield, a member of the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s disaster relief team serving on the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) incident command team in Port-Au-Prince.

Between Feb. 1 and March 31, more than 200 South Baptist volunteers from 16 state conventions and other SBC mission agencies have gone or are scheduled to go to Haiti -- serving as medical units, chaplains, building inspection/assessment teams, and water purification and well-drilling experts.

Because of the recurring aftershocks, Haitian families – fearing future quakes and tremors – refuse to move back into their damaged homes.

“The Haitians are still sleeping in the streets because they won’t go back into their block homes,” said Terry Henderson, disaster relief consultant for the North American Mission Board (NAMB), who just returned from two weeks’ duty in Haiti. “Every night they pull their beds out, block the streets and go to sleep. They’re really worried about going back inside.” 

So in an effort to reach out to Haitian families, SBDR building inspection and chaplain teams have been surveying homes, churches and schools to determine if they’re structurally safe.

“Our assessment teams are going in and examining every house for safety. Stucco walls may be cracked but the house’s main supports may be okay. If a family’s home is safe, they need to move back in because Haiti’s rainy season starts in April,” Henderson said.

Henderson said the majority of Haiti homes totally collapsed during and right after the Jan. 12 earthquake, and of those, nearly all have one or more family members still entombed in the rubble. 

“We had an interpreter who showed us his brother’s house, where his brother and nine family members are still buried. There’s just not enough heavy equipment in Haiti to dig out all the bodies under the concrete.”

The thousands of Haitians who survived the original earthquake have forsaken the capital city of Port-Au-Prince for new lives in the Haiti countryside, where they’re claiming land by staking off plots with sticks and rocks. There, they build new lean-tos of plastic sheeting. However, several tent “cities,” inhabited with as many as 200,000 Haitians, also remain in Port-Au-Prince.

“Eventually, we’re going to help people rebuild their homes but we’re not at that point yet,” said Henderson. “One idea is to build some temporary housing before the rainy season starts.”

As of Feb. 22, SBDR volunteers had worked almost 1,200 volunteer days, made over 9,200 ministry contacts, resulting in 222 professions of faith. Medical units from a dozen states have seen almost 8,500 Haitian patients, dispensed 16,900 medicines and distributed 24 tons of rice (204,000 servings).

Although Henderson said the medical teams are no longer seeing as many earthquake trauma injuries and the number of amputations has dropped sharply, the teams continue to treat six-week-old “crush” wounds, follow-up injuries and infections. They’re also delivering babies and even treating gunshot wounds. The SBDR team is currently setting up a huge drug “warehouse” under a large circus-type tent.

The lack of sanitation, stress, jammed traffic, ample housing and security issues continue to plague the people of Haiti as well as the scores of volunteers who have arrived in the country to help them, he says.

“Some Haitians see a puddle of water by the road or get a bucket of water out of a ditch and use that to bathe. It’s usually contaminated with raw sewage. Streets are clogged because of garbage and rubble so it may take 45 minutes for us to drive one mile. Bodies can still be found along the sides of roads. The local Haitian volunteers are under a lot of stress because they work all day, get little sleep and then have to sleep outside in the rain.

“Housing is still a big problem as we prepare to deploy more people,” said Henderson. “The Florida (Baptist Convention) guest house only holds 55 people. There’s also the challenge of transporting our volunteers around safely. There are some dangerous areas where you have to be aware of where you are at all times, and know when to roll up your windows and lock your doors.”

As if Haiti did not have enough problems, crime continues. Henderson said “taxi drivers” skulk around the Port-Au-Prince area, pick up unsuspecting Haitians, rob them and dump them at remote spots.

Henderson said Haiti also is not without its heart-breaking moments -- even six weeks after the initial earthquake.

On arriving in Haiti, Henderson said he anticipated seeing flowers and memorials at the burial sites for the some 200,000 people who perished and were buried in mass graves. Instead, he spotted only one tiny cross at one burial site.

“It’s humbling to go to Haiti and see all the death and destruction. But I didn’t meet any Haitians who didn’t want us there. They just want our help.”

Henderson said Fritz Wilson, state disaster relief director for the Florida Baptist Convention (FBC), was named by the Unified Coordination Group as the first long-term SBDR incident commander for Haiti, overseeing Southern Baptist disaster relief efforts as more and more volunteers are deployed in the weeks ahead. The Unified Coordination Group consists of representatives of NAMB, the International Mission Board, Baptist Global Response, the FBC, the Confraternite Missionaire Baptiste d’Haiti, and the Baptist Convention of Haiti. 

Transportation into Port-Au-Prince should become easier since commercial airline traffic was set to resume at the airport on Feb. 19.

In addition to NAMB, the International Mission Board and Baptist Global Response staff, state conventions who have sent, or will be sending SBDR volunteers to Haiti from Feb. 1 to March 31 include: Florida, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, California, Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, Texas Baptist Men, Louisiana, New York, Arkansas, Virginia Baptist Mission Board, Kentucky, Mississippi, Indiana and Wyoming.

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