Cottonwood relief worker returns to quake-torn Haiti

Photo by Nicklas Rogers

COMMON SIGHT: "Every street looks like this," Cottonwood resident Nicklas Rogers said of a photograph he took of the aftermath of an earthquake's wide-spread destruction in Haiti. With cracks in most buildings, people eat, sleep and live out of doors and away from crumbling walls of concrete buildings.

After returning stateside for about three weeks, Cottonwood resident and relief worker Nicklas Rogers was to return to Haiti today, March 3. The country was ravaged by a Jan. 12 earthquake that left over 200,000 dead and the government infrastructure in a shambles.

"I've been all over the world, this destruction is the worst I've seen," Rogers said of the conditions he witnessed in Haiti last month.

While touring Haiti's capitol, Port au Prince, Rogers visited a teenage girl receiving care in a tent hospital erected by Doctors Without Borders. Rogers related her story:

Unable to escape a crumbling school building when the eight-second earthquake shook Haiti, the girl and her friend held onto each other as the building collapsed on top of them. Everyone else at the school died. Buried but still alive under the rubble, they heard people outside calling, asking if anyone was still inside. The girls screamed for help. The potential rescuers answered, asking whether the girls had any money. When the girls said no, the people left. The girl said her friend died that day, while she lived on for three days before rescuers found her. In order to pull the one girl out of the rubble, rescuers had to cut through her dead friend, severing the corpse's head and arm.

"Everybody has a story like that," Rogers said, lamenting about the general state of mental health in Haiti. After hearing so many stories of heartache, Rogers said it became difficult to hear more.

To help the country rebuild, Rogers, a mission planner with Christian aid organization Forward Edge International (FEI), identified the means by which 500 relief workers from FEI could help rebuild some homes of Christian Haitians, he said.

Rogers will direct FEI workers in efforts to build small, permanent homes in Jacmel as well as distribute food along with Grace Ministries in Carrefour.

He hopes the relief workers can build ten homes in the three months he will be there. Rogers added that people with the new homes may be asked to pay a small amount per month for the new home, and that the accumulated money would go into a fund for community-wide projects.

A major obstacle to rebuilding houses is that with concrete boulders and remains of toppled buildings are laying everywhere, Rogers said.

"You can't build on top of rubble. It has to be cleared away first," Rogers said.

Clearing ground is virtually impossible without heavy equipment, he said, adding that with only one working dock in Haiti, supplies and equipment are slow to arrive.

Due to the earthquake, 230,000 people died and 700,000 people were displaced from the the capitol city, Port au Prince, according to a US AID online document dated Feb. 22.