Hands Together president Father Tom Hagan and executive director Doug Campbell were expected to board a plane out of the Dominican Republic Thursday night, headed for Boston. The quake destroyed Hagan’s home, killing two seminarians who lived there. The Vatican has reported that the quake claimed the life of the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, who was killed when the archdiocesan office building collapsed.
O’Donnell said the Sisters of Charity who operate a nearby orphanage are now reported to be safe, along with the children. “I thank God the nuns and the babies and children are safe,” said O’Donnell, who has visited the orphanage on several occasions. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them. I am now crying tears of joy.”
Missionaries Don and Sandee Adamson also rejoiced on Thursday, Jan. 14, after learning of the safety of at least one - and probably both - of their employees unaccounted for since the earthquake Tuesday, Jan. 12, in Haiti.
Joseph Sonel Bonhomme reached Don Adamson, an assistant pastor at the Living Word Church, by phone about 1 p.m. Thursday.
“He is safe and was waiting for a signal on his phone so he could get through. He believes JB is safe also. GREAT NEWS!!,” Sandee Adamson said in an e-mail.
Bonhomme and Jean J.B. Bernard are the Adamsons’ contacts with the Haitian government.
Before the earthquake, Don Adamson planned to return to Haiti in February to acquire land for a ministry training center. On Thursday, he was raising funds and working on other logistics in hopes of getting to Haiti as soon as possible. He planned to spend $600, just sent to Haiti to buy a steel door to keep goats from a school, on a 55-gallon drum of diesel to fuel his truck after his truck.
Terry Essex , director of A Brighter Day Ministries in Dayton, was relieved to hear that 10 orphans, the director and other staff associated with A Brighter Day’s orphanage in Mirebalais had made it through the quake unharmed.
“There’s minor structural damage, but it’s not too bad,” he said.
The facility, which houses 10 orphans, sits more than 30 miles from Port-au-Prince. But Essex had been unable since the quake hit to reach its director, Sylvanie Donne, because Donne’s cell phone had stopped working. Donne had to travel to a neighboring city to get phone service before she could reach Dayton, Essex said.
The orphanage has running water, shelter and 20 acres of open land, so they plan to bring Haitians who lost their homes to the orphanage grounds and give them someplace to stay, Essex said. He plans to wire money to Mirebalais as soon as possible so his staff can begin buying rice and beans for displaced Haitians, he said.
While his orphanage sits more than 30 miles from Port-au-Prince, Essex said officials at another orphanage in Mirebalais told him that structures in the city were damaged by the 7.0-magnitude quake. He said that many of the buildings in Mirebalais are old and made out of substandard materials, making them more fragile.
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as Port-au-Prince,” he said. “But, still, there is damage as far as 35 miles away.”
Typically, Essex, an intern chaplain at Kettering Medical Center, said he calls Haiti every other week and makes quarterly visits there. Before the quake, he had been planning to travel to Haiti in three weeks.
He’s hoping that someone with a HAM radio can get make contact with Mirebalais and find out information about the orphanage and pass it along to him. Essex can be reached through his Web site, www.abrighterdayministries.com.
Also Thursday, Mike Miller of Kettering learned his wife Penny, 51, and her father, Kenny Stein, 74, of Celina, survived the earthquake in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince.
“She heard a loud rumble. Things started falling off the walls. She ran out,” said Miller, a volunteer firefighter in Kettering and letter carrier in Miamisburg.
“She actually called me earlier today.”
Miller said his wife was moved to call him after watching his story on WHIO TV Channel 7’s web site.
“She was crying. She’s got a heavy heart from all the death around,” Miller said.
It was Miller’s wife’s fifth trip to Haiti, the seventh for her father.
“He said this was going to be his last time,” Miller said.
The Millers are unsure of the fate of a Haitian boy named Fennel who lived with them two years ago and attended Wright State University.
Likewise they share in the worries of Josue, another Haitian boy who picked her and her father up at the airport Tuesday. He’s been searching for three sisters he has been raising himself, along with an uncle.
Still Miller was relieved on Thursday.
“This time yesterday it was a totally different world,” he said.
Ron Elie of Huber Heights continued to wait for some news Thursday, Jan. 14. Elie said he was speaking with his brother in Port-au-Prince by telephone Tuesday when the quake struck, bringing their conversation to an abrupt end.
Since then, Elie said he has been unable to reach his parents and siblings, all of whom live in the Haitian capital. He has no idea whether his brother was indoors or outdoors when the quake hit.
“They are right in the middle of the catastrophe,” he said of his family. “Myself right now, my stomach is in knots and worried something, you know, something may happen.”
Elie said he has every television in his home tuned to news broadcasts and he continues to surf the Internet, looking for any information he can find. He also has called people he knows in New York and Miami who also have relatives in Haiti, looking for answers.
“But right now nobody knows anything,” he said.
If he doesn’t get information soon, he will travel to Haiti at the first opportunity, he said. If enough time passes, he will fly into Santo Domingo, the capital of the neighboring Dominican Republic, where he can cross the border by car and drive several hours to Port-au-Prince, he said.
“I’m sure the roads are cut off and it’s probably going to be treacherous,” he said. “It may be a long shot, but it’s a shot anyway.”
Jim Simpson, vice president of the Dayton Amateur Radio Association, said individual amateur radio operators are monitoring transmissions from International Radio Emergency Support Coalition in case any emergency traffic needs relayed to or from the Dayton area.
However, Simpson said Thursday afternoon that radio traffic out of Haiti was limited, but should increase over the next day or so as more people and equipment arrive in the country.
“We are capable of communicating to and from the area as required once multiple stations have been established,” Simpson said in an email. “If necessary, we will man our communications site in Huber Heights to facilitate any appropriate traffic into Haiti from Dayton.”
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