Devastated by three storms, Hispaniola braces for more

Episcopal Church partners assessing damage, mobilizing aid

By Mary Frances Schjonberg, September 05, 2008

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[Episcopal News Service] Fay, Gustav, and Hanna, all tropical storms
or hurricanes, have ravaged the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and at
least two more storms -- Ike and Josephine -- could be headed into
the area.
"Know that you are in our prayers, and those of this whole Church,"
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote September 5 in a
message emailed to Diocese of Haiti Bishop Zache Duracin. "God never
abandons us, even though the night seems long and dark."
The one-two-three punch that has hit the Caribbean with more to come,
is "pretty unprecedented," said Matthew St. John, Episcopal Relief
and Development's program officer for Latin America and the Caribbean.
"The situation in Haiti is extremely serious and there's a
possibility for it to get even more serious," he told ENS on
September 5.
The situation is also severely hampering relief efforts, ERD said in
a news release, which also contains information about how to help
those efforts.
Hurricane Ike, which was a Category 3 hurricane as of 5:00 p.m. EDT
September 5, is currently projected to sideswipe northern Haiti early
on September 7 before it barrels toward the Bahamas, Cuba, south
Florida or the Gulf of Mexico.
Behind Ike is Tropical Storm Josephine, which at 5:00 p.m. EDT
September 5 was about 725 miles west of the southernmost Cape Verde
Islands and moving northwest at eight miles an hour.
Hispaniola was still trying to assess the damage caused by Tropical
Storm Fay on August 15 and Hurricane Gustav on August 26 when then-
Hurricane Hanna arrived and stalled over the island earlier this
week. At least 50 people died in Haiti from Fay's destruction. Gustav
is said to have caused more than 70 death and September 5 estimates
place the Haiti death toll from Hanna at 137.
St. John said that the Rev. Frantz Cole, the Haitian diocese's
development officer, had been updating him as information reached
Cole about Hanna's impact. With no power and widespread flooding,
assessing needs has been hard, St. John said.
"In times like these, getting good information is always difficult,"
he said.
ERD has already helped its local partners care for 1,000 people in
southern Haiti who were affected by Gustav, St. John said.
Gustav hit hard in the Haitian capital of Port au Prince. Sharon
Babe, who teaches at the Episcopal University in Port-au-Prince,
emailed ERD's senior marketing and communications director, Malaika
Kamunanwire, on September 2 to report that the capital had lost many
of its few remaining trees and that much of the city is without
power. Babe noted that electricity often goes out in the city, but
said, "Haiti is definitely having some real problems at the moment."
ERD and its partners in Haiti know that the normal post-disaster need
for immediate food, water and shelter is complicated by the country's
lack of infrastructure and the fact that the storms have come near
the annual harvest times. St. John is receiving reports of crops
having been severely damaged or destroyed. Such loss comes at a time
when Haiti had already been hard-hit by the global food crisis
prompted by poor harvests, diversion of crops into biofuels, and high
energy prices, among other causes.
The Associated Press reported September 5 that a ship carrying more
than 33 tons of food, water and other relief supplies managed to dock
in Gonaives, the country's fourth-largest city. Hurricane Hanna
inundated Gonaives. News reports tell of people stranded on rooftops
for days. Deforested mountains surrounding the coastal city, which is
located on a river plain, suffer from mudslides even in much less
severe rainstorms.
UN peacekeepers worked through the night to repair a storm-damaged
dock in the flooded city so that soldiers and dock workers could
offload 15 metric tons of bottled water, 36,000 water-purification
tablets, 16 metric tons of high-energy biscuits and two metric tons
of rice, along with other supplies, the AP said. Seventy thousand
people are estimated to be in emergency shelters.
St. John said he had reports of UN peacekeepers being instrumental in
providing such logistics for the relief effort.
Hanna weakened as it moved out of the Caribbean but was nearing
hurricane strength again as it neared the southeast coast of the U.S.
Storm warnings are up for the East Coast as far north as Massachusetts.
The Episcopal Church of Haiti is the one of the largest diocese of
the Episcopal Church. It has nearly 83,000 baptized members in about
96 congregations. The diocese was founded in 1861 when the Rev. James
Theodore Holly, one of the Episcopal Church's first African-American
priests -- ordained in 1856 at age 27 -- left New Haven, Connecticut,
for Haiti with 100 emigrants.
The Haitian church runs primary and secondary schools and a school
for handicapped students, as well as vocational and agricultural
training efforts, a university and a seminary.
The Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic, in the other
Hispaniola nation, also runs schools, a seminary, clinics, camps and
other outreach efforts. Some 6,000 Episcopalians worship in about 56
congregations, all of which are missions.
The Haitian diocese is part of Province II of the Episcopal Church,
while the Dominican Republic diocese is part of Province IX. The
latter's bishop, Julio Holguin, is a member of the Executive Council
Information on all Atlantic storms is available from NOAA's National
Hurricane Center. A NOAA video loop showing storms in the Atlantic is
available here.
-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is Episcopal Life Media
correspondent for Episcopal Church governance, structure, and trends,
as well as news of the dioceses of Province II. She is based in
Neptune, New Jersey, and New York City