> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Rodney & Sharyn
> To: R&S
> Sent: 9/2/2008 8:30:57 PM
> Subject: Rain in Haiti
>
> There is a severe thunderstorm rolling in and I want to send this
> to several of you. Sorry I don’t have time to personalize or give
> more details. Just wanted you to know Haiti is definitely having
> some real problems at the moment.
>
> Hanna stalled over us and then started drifting backwards just in
> case everything wasn’t already damaged.
>
> One of our IOM offices 60 miles north of here is flooded. Water is
> about 10 feet deep inside the office. Everything is trashed
> including computers, inverter, records, everything needed for a
> functioning office. Top of pickup truck is 3 feet under water as
> is a huge generator. We have a couple employees stuck on the roof
> of their concrete houses and another one in a neighbor’s second
> story concrete house with water still rising and only 6”from
> touching the floor where dozens are holed up. No one is even
> discussing rescue plans for the city of 100,000 at this point.
>
> The hurricane shifted course last night. At 7PM an all clear was
> given as it was tracking away from here as scheduled. Our office
> leader (project officer, he is called) woke up at 2AM to shouting
> and heavy rains. Streets were flooded and the office located ½
> mile away was 6 feet deep already. By morning it was 9 feet of
> water and the immensity of the crisis became more apparent by the
> minute. At the moment he is back in his apartment with concrete
> walls that were fences blown down all around him so he cannot drive
> anywhere. Earlier he had tried to get to the UN base but water was
> too deep to traverse. He has no electricity or generator and one
> dead cell phone already.
>
> Rains still continues and the damage grows. This was a town where
> a similar flash flood from a hurricane killed 3000 people on 2005.
>
> Here in PAP we have a hard rain falling. Probably not enough to do
> much flooding as long as it stops in a few more hours. Had 80 mph
> gusts for 6 hours today and PAP lost a good percentage of their few
> remaining trees. Electric lines down everywhere. Fortunately it
> is not too much of an inconvenience to have no electric as we are
> used to that.
>
> Scattered across the country are stories of flooding but weather is
> such that no one can do any assessments at the moment. Our office
> is one of the key primary responders for shelter and non food
> items. We just sent over a 1000 units of supplies 2 days ago to
> Gustav refugees. Preliminary reports could suggest we need 100
> times that many this time. We’ll see all too soon.
>
> I was 2 days late getting about 15,000 trees boxed up and ready to
> plant. The people were all ready to box them, the driver ready to
> deliver, and community groups ready to plant. It would have been
> nice to have them watered by this rain so that we could say it was
> doing at least a little good. Never did like those pesky weekends.
>
> We have been having internet problems all day so I think I had
> better get this sent now.
>
> Rodney and Sharyn



Pix Mahler
pix@...
http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/profiles/mahlerp.htm
PCUSA Haiti Partnership Facilitator
1022 Floyd St.
Lynchburg, VA 24501
434-385-9486

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