Haiti, Part 2 - Aftershock report rom CARE staff
Thursday, 01/21/2010 - 10:05 am by Bo Cutter | Post a Comment
Shaping the future with today’s choices.
I thought you would be interested in a report I received yesterday immediately after the big aftershock that hit Port-au-Prince in the morning. This came from CARE staff there, and quotes our security coordinator who was on the roof of a building when the shock hit.
“A 6.1-magnitude aftershock shook Port-au-Prince at 6:30 a.m. local time this morning. We’ve received confirmation that staff staying at the office — as well as staff in the apartments across the street from the office — are safe, but Bogdan Dumitru, our security coordinator on the ground, reported that they are still working to confirm that all staff at home are safe. The experience was harrowing and the ramifications remain inconclusive. Bogdan describes”:
“If this happens to weakened buildings, I don’t know what damage that will cause. I am sitting on the top of the office, because this is where we get a cell signal. I have to get down soon because there might be another aftershock. We are trying to calm the staff. This one was stronger than all of the other aftershocks. I was across the road in the apartment. People made it down from the fifth floor downstairs faster than I did. People were screaming. I don’t know what kind of damage there was for our staff. Some of them were at their home, so we will try to find out if they are safe. I didn’t hear any cracking of the building. There was a real rumble; then, the earth moved. It wasn’t that long, but I can’t tell how long. I was running. It was closer to Jacmel, so I don’t know what the impact will be there. We haven’t heard any reports from Jacmel, and our internet access was cut off after the quake. We are next to an IDP camp, and when the quake hit there was a big scream coming out of the camp. They’ve lost everything-all their houses — and they are terrified.”
I wanted you to have a sense of what is happening there. As you can imagine, my admiration and respect for CARE’s people who do this all of the time is almost impossible to exaggerate.
