My home town of Wellington in New Zealand, sits directly on the fault line where the Pacific and the Australian tectonic plates meet. Shudders and tremors happen most days. There is always the risk of the ‘big one’. In 1931 the east coast of the North Island was devastated by a magnitude 7.8 quake. We are taught basic earthquake safety as children. Essentially there is very little you can do. Except maybe pray.
This morning I listened to an unanswered phone ringing somewhere on the streets of Port-au-Prince. A BBC reporter was helping a Haitian couple now living in London try to find their grandson. I found myself praying tearfully for him to answer, but eventually they hung up. Haiti suffers devastating poverty, political turmoil, and the dual epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis. This earthquake and the aftershocks have been catastrophically damaging. It’s heart-breaking.
Disasters Emergency Committee, is a coalition of 13 relief agencies in the UK you can give through the website or by a special phone line: 0370 60 60 900.
Oxfam are also taking donations.
More than $2 million was raised yesterday via SMS in the States (text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10. It’ll show up on your next mobile bill).
There are more opportunities to donate here.
Comments
@Thursday – the personal connections are heartbreaking, the stories involving the kids just unthinkable.
Very heartbreaking! Thanks for all the links.
I’ve spent part of today staring at a picture I was sent of a four year old boy who I’d recently been ‘allotted’ as my sponsored child which I do via Plan. For the whole of his life to date, he wasn’t living in the best and most promising of environments, now he’s possibly not living at all.