The Boston Haitian Reporter's Richardson Innocent has left the Delmas section of Port-au-Prince and is now in Cabaret, a town north of Haiti's capitol where the situation is considerably less dire. The Reporter spoke to Innocent on Sunday afternoon just before 3 p.m. We had last talked with him on Thursday when he was still in Delmas.
(2:20 p.m.)- Our newsroom just received a call from Renel Louis Jean, 22, who is in Au Cayes and is desperately looking for help. He has left Port-au-Prince, where he was when the earthquake hit, with a group of survivors.
His says mother Alourdes Pierre and his father, Jeanty Louis Jean, were killed in the earthquake and have been buried in Carrefour, just outside Port-au-Prince, where he is from.
“They are still picking up bodies from the streets,” he said. “We are not getting any help.”
Les Cayes is located several hours away from Haiti's capitol.
Rep. Marie St. Fleur passes along word that the American Red Cross needs 100 Creole speaking interpreters who can join relief efforts aboard a US hospital ship bound for Haiti. It is a minimum one month commitment.
Wyclef Jean is speaking out against public reports that have raised questions about the track record of his charity Yele Haiti, which has raised over $1 million through a text message campaign since Tuesday's earthquake.
The White House has announced today that two former presidents —Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — will head up a new fund.
Here is the statement from the fund's website.
Statement by President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush
"We are deeply saddened by the devastation and suffering caused by the recent earthquake in Haiti. The people of Haiti are in our thoughts and prayers.
Riche Zamor, a Boston man who serves as president of the University of Fondwa tells the Reporter today that the school's facilities have been completely destroyed. Fondwa, a town located about 45 minutes southeast of Port-au-Prince, is utterly destroyed, according to Zamor, who is in the United States but has spoken directly to several members of his staff on the ground.
Boston transplant Rich Innocent relays a tale of survival, teamwork among the people of Delmas Richardson Innocent: Proud Bostonian, Haitian now searching for survivors in DelmasFor the third consecutive night, Richardson Innocent will rest his head tonight underneath a tree in Delmas, a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. There’s a machete and a chisel close by his side. Clustered around him is his cousin, Norton, and a frightened family he has known for only a few weeks.
All over the neighborhood, a rumor has spread that another aftershock is coming tonight at midnight. No one will sleep indoors for fear of being entombed in rubble like so many others all around them if another one hits.
Innocent, 36, isn’t sure what to think any more. A longtime Boston resident who just moved back to his native Haiti last month, he’s not the superstitious type. But, after the events of the last 60 hours, he’s not taking any chances. He and a group of nine others will sleep under the tree tonight, far enough away from a nearby house, one of the few still standing in Delmas 35.
In the morning, Richardson and his cousin will rise early and hit the streets of this community on the outskirts of Haiti’s destroyed capitol city. They will spend their daylight hours searching for survivors and for supplies to help feed their friends and neighbors.
Every able-bodied person in the neighborhood is doing their part. Without any discernable help from the outside world — there are no rescue teams, no soldiers, no heavy equipment in Delmas yet— Haitians are helping Haitians.
The news coming out of Haiti is horrible. The images are heart-breaking. The damages are catastrophic. The suffering seems limitless. Large parts of Port-au-Prince lie in rubble. A shaky YouTube video shot just before dusk on Tuesday from a hill overlooking the city shows nothing but haze, evidently a cloud of dust rising from the floor of that teeming city in a valley.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today the launch of a new tool on www.state.gov, the “Person Finder,” to allow people to find and share information on missing loved ones in Haiti. The tool can be found at http://www.state.gov/haitiquake.