Mennonite Weekly Review

AKRON , Pa. — Mennonite Central Committee and Mennonite Disaster Service are working together and accepting donations for emergency response to the recent hurricanes and tropical storms in the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast area.

A home destroyed by Hurricane Gustav on Isle de Jean Charles, La. — Photo by Jerry Klassen/MDS

MCC — which is responsible for international disaster response — is specifically accepting donations for Haiti, where the recent hurricanes and tropical storms have killed hundreds of people and left hundreds of thousands without food, clean water and shelter.

MDS — responsible for disaster response in Canada, the United States and their territories — is responding to recent hurricanes causing damage in Louisiana and Mississippi and has an emergency response team working in Baton Rouge, La.

In Haiti, MCC is working through a partner organization, Sant Kretyen Developman Entegre (Christian Center for Integrated Development), to distribute water, food, medicine and health kits in northwestern Haiti, the area hardest hit. The northwestern city of Gonaïves remains flooded from hurricanes Gustav and Hanna.

“Haiti has been hit hard overall, and Gonaïves the most significantly,” said Mark Epp, MCC’s associate director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “The government and the U.N. are struggling to keep up with the demands for help, especially because access is so difficult.”

According to Epp, MCC workers have not been able to travel to the north from headquarters in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Heavy rains on Sunday brought down a key bridge, severing the only viable land route to Gonaïves. Many bridges in other areas of Haiti have also collapsed, and homes have been washed away and crops ruined.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is unusually vulnerable to damage from storms because many sections of its forests have been chopped down and used for fuel, allowing rainwater to easily wash down mountains and cause massive flooding.

Epp said MCC will continue to monitor the effects of tropical storms on Haiti, and other Caribbean and Central American countries, seeking ways to help. MCC has committed $35,000 for the initial Haiti response.

In Pass Christian, Miss., MDS project directors said the town and MDS site are mostly intact, with some debris around. There was electrical power, but still no phone service as of Sept. 9.

In conversation with FEMA, MDS is assessing the damage and has begun an initial response “to give a few people a little hope in the midst of this disaster,” said Jerry Klassen, MDS disaster response coordinator.