Earthquake hits home

Some of our neighbors were at the epicenter of the catastrophic 7.0 earthquake that shook Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The quake, reported by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), was felt as far as Cuba and  approximately 3 million people were “exposed to the severe shaking.” 

The quake occurred at 4:53 p.m. Jan. 12. It hit one of the most populated parts of the country.

The country lies just 700 miles east of Miami and is known to be one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Coventry’s Cornerstone Free Methodist Church sent a four-person missionary team to Port-au-Prince.  The team was on their way to a drilling site for clean water when the earthquake happened, according to Pastor Brenda Young.

Young heads up Clear Blue Water, an organization that provides fresh water to Haitians. 
The team immediately assisted in the rescue efforts. At the time of the interview, the team was to be evacuated from Haiti.

“We haven’t heard from them directly,” Young said.” I got an e-mail from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince. There is no communication. They can’t get out except through the embassy.”

She said the group will be flown to Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic and then to Miami where they will be debriefed and undergo crisis counseling.

“They have shared that the devastation is unbelievable. They expect violence to break out very shortly which is one of the reasons why they are trying to get the Americans out,” Young said. “They are just so poor there. They are going to start looting.”

The team stayed with a host family and several other Free Methodist missionaries. Their hostess Jeanne Munos and two Floridian missionaries are unaccounted for. They were thought to be in their house when it was flattened. Jack Munos, Jeanne’s husband, has several broken bones and a damaged kidney. It took six hours for rescuers to dig him out from a concrete pile at a construction site.

“Jack and an assistant are expected to be Medevaced out of the country by the U.S. Embassy,” Young said. “Jack has to leave with the knowledge that his wife is trapped. I can’t imagine it.”
For the embassy to get anyone out is a huge task. There is no infrastructure, no electricity, no
sanitary water, no sewer, no phones, no cleared roads, no working port, no passable roads and no heavy machinery. Hands are the only tools the residents have to dig people out of the rubble.
Hartville’s Jared Coblentz, 26, and his wife, Jalayne, were working, at a boys and girls orphanage in Port-au-Prince. He spoke with his father, Marion, 20 minutes after the catastrophic quake. 

“They are safe,” said Marion. “He called me before it was on the news. He said there was a major earthquake and he heard people screaming and crying out. They understand language enough that they understood someone was killed.”

The couple is preparing the girl’s orphanage to open in May, but they might open it now.

“They are anticipating that they are going to find some orphan girls,” Marion said. “They are going to do whatever they can to bring them in if that is the case.” 

The family has three buildings at the orphanage.

“We have a boy’s orphanage with Christian Fellowship Mission. We also have the girl’s orphanage and a mission house where we bring groups down and they stay there,” Marion said.
The hospital was one of the first buildings to fall to the ground. The Presidential Palace, the National Cathedral, schools and most houses are gone.

“Part of the problem is that the concrete they have looks solid, but it crumbles pretty quick,” Marion said. “A lot of the blocks too, have been there for a very long time. A little bit of shaking, the walls just collapsed.”

The orphanages have structural damage, but they are still standing. The compound walls that surrounded their buildings are gone and will have to be rebuilt.

According to the USGS, an earthquake that measures in at 6.0 is equal to 15,023 tons of dynamite. This 7.0 earthquake had the equivalent of 457,063 tons of TNT.

There have been approximately 30 aftershocks in 24 hours with the highest one registering at 5.9, minutes after the first one. 

Jared and his wife are not staying in the orphanage.

“They slept outside in the yard last night,” Marion said. “They plan on that for the next couple nights to see if there will be anymore tremors.”

To help Jared and the girl’s orphanage, send donations to Christian Fellowship Mission, PO Box 55035 Sarasota, Florida, 34232 or their Web site at http://christianfellowshipmission.org/.
The Red Cross needs medical supplies. Hundreds of thousands are presumed dead and trapped. Cornerstone Church is accepting donations for water.

“We are going to be sending bottled water as quickly as we can,” Young said. “We will get it straight to Haiti.”

This is the first major earthquake in the area in over a century.

“They are usually ready for hurricanes with four of them in 2008,” Marion said, “But they are not prepared for this. Mentally they are, I guess, but physically, their housing is just too inadequate.”
Marion is expected to join his son. He bought a one way ticket to Haiti for Sunday. He plans on putting work teams together. It is being reported that rescuers should bring their own resources to survive. There is no place to stay. The Montana Hotel where many people stayed is gone.

From Jared’s blog
Thank you so much for your prayers. God is at work and is here with us. We were able to take Bernard to a hospital (boy from orphanage)...but you can imagine what that was like.

So, a nurse friend of ours we thankfully passed on the road, and she was able to help tremendously!        

Please pray for healing for him. He is in a lot of pain...he was standing next to the cement wall at the orphanage and part of it fell on him. all the other boys are okay :) and their building has hardly any cracks in it. Praise the Lord.

We have seen a US coastguard plane flying over our house, and many aid trucks from the Dominican already.
   
On Jan. 13, this was posted:
Jared and Jalayne’s prayer requests for today are that they are able to find water, much wisdom and discernment, and to find out the full extent of damage and stability of their house.
Every wall in the downstairs of their orphanage building is cracked badly. Last night was spent sleeping in their 18 passenger van with a group of people…The group that is with them has nothing, so they will need to find water and food for everyone. There are no stores open, obviously. They felt aftershocks all night and were told the aftershocks will continue into Friday…Someone told them that they have not seen any standing building over one story. No Haitian phones are working, so there is no way for the people to contact each other.

To read Jared's blog go to jjcoblentz@blogspot.com.