Dear friends,

Below, our 2nd appeal about the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  The loss of life and damage is staggering.

At this time, I am appealing for funds, even as we reach out to contact people and organizations we have worked with in Haiti in the past.

Please re-send this to people you know, who might consider donating funds.

Thank-you very much.

Grahame, info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448

TO DONATE: See below

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January 13, 2010
Haiti Earthquake, #2

"Life is already so fragile in Haiti, and to have this on such a massive scale, it's unimaginable how the country will be able to recover from this." - Edwidge Danticat

"It is a tragedy that defies expression; a tragedy that compels all people to the highest levels of human compassion and solidarity." – Militarily ousted, former President Aristide

“APOCALYPTIC” 7.0 EARTHQUAKE DEVASTATES HAITI

BELOW

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HAITI EARTHQUAKE DEATH & DAMAGE 'STAGGERING'
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/3226761/Haiti-earthquake-damage-staggering

Haitians have piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital after a powerful earthquake crushed thousands of structures yesterday, from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the UN peacekeeping headquarters. Untold numbers were still trapped.

It seemed clear that the death toll from Tuesday afternoon's magnitude-7.0 quake would run into the thousands, with the country's prime minister estimating it could be as high as 100,000.

The chief of the UN mission in Haiti, Hedi Annabi, was among the dead, Haitian President Rene Preval said. "Ambassador Annabi died. We send our sympathy and condolences to all the international community," Preval told journalists in Port-au-Prince. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had said earlier he could not confirm reports Annabi had died.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince was also among the victims.

International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said a third of Haiti's 9 million people may need emergency aid and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge. The United Nations said the capital's main airport was "fully operational" and that relief flights would begin today.

Aftershocks continued to rattle the capital of 2 million people as women covered in dust clawed out of debris, wailing. Stunned people wandered the streets holding hands. Thousands gathered in public squares to sing hymns.

People pulled bodies from collapsed homes, covering them with sheets by the side of the road.

Passersby lifted the sheets to see if loved ones were underneath. Outside a crumbled building the bodies of five children and three adults lay in a pile.

The prominent died along with the poor: the body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, 63, was found in the ruins of his office, said Father Pierre Le Beller of the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France. He told The Associated Press by telephone that fellow missionaries in Haiti told him they found Miot's body.

Tens of thousands of people lost their homes as buildings that were flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions collapsed in the shaking. Nobody offered an estimate of the dead, but the numbers were clearly enormous.

"The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," Dr. Louis-Gerard Gilles, a former senator, said as he helped survivors. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together." A young American aid worker was trapped for about 10 hours under the rubble of her mission house before she was rescued by her husband, who told CBS's "The Early Show" that he drove 160km to Port-au-Prince to find her when he learned of the quake. Frank Thorp said he dug for more than an hour to free his wife, Jillian, and a co-worker, from under about a foot of concrete.

Even relatively wealthy neighborhoods were devastated. An Associated Press videographer saw a wrecked hospital where people screamed for help in Petionville, a hillside district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians as well as the poor.

At a destroyed four-storey apartment building, a girl of about 16 stood atop a car, trying to peer inside while several men pulled at a foot sticking from rubble. She said her family was inside. "A school near here collapsed totally," Petionville resident Ken Michel said after surveying the damage. "We don't know if there were any children inside." He said many seemingly sturdy homes nearby were split apart.

The UN's 9000 peacekeepers in Haiti, many of whom are from Brazil, were distracted from aid efforts by their own tragedy: Many spent the night hunting for survivors in the ruins of their headquarters. "It would appear that everyone who was in the building, including my friend Hedi Annabi, the United Nations' Secretary General's special envoy, and everyone with him and around him, are dead," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on RTL radio. UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy would not confirm that Annabi was dead but said he was among more than 100 people missing in the rubble of its headquarters. He said only about 10 people had been pulled out, many of them badly injured. Fewer than five bodies had been pulled from the rubble, he said. Brazil's army said at least four of its peacekeepers were killed and five injured, while Jordan's official news agency said three of its peacekeepers were killed and 33 injured. A state newspaper in China said eight Chinese peacekeepers were known dead and 10 were missing - though officials later said the information was not confirmed.

Much of the National Palace pancaked on itself, but Haiti's ambassador to Mexico, Robert Manuel, said President Rene Preval and his wife survived the earthquake. He had no details.

The quake struck at 4:53 pm local time, centred about 15km west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of only 8km, the US Geological Survey said. USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti.

Most Haitians are desperately poor, and after years of political instability the country has no real construction standards. In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60 percent of buildings were shoddily built and unsafe in normal circumstances.

Edwidge Danticat, an award-winning Haitian-American author was unable to contact relatives in Haiti. She sat with family and friends at her home in Miami, looking for news on the internet and watching TV news reports.  "You want to go there, but you just have to wait," she said. "Life is already so fragile in Haiti, and to have this on such a massive scale, it's unimaginable how the country will be able to recover from this."

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FORMER HAITIAN PRESIDENT SENDS CONDOLENCES
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE60C13K._CH_.2420

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Former Haiti President Jean Bertrand Aristide, exiled in South Africa, sent his condolences on Wednesday to his countrymen after a devastating earthquake hit the Caribbean nation. "My wife and I stand with the people of our country and mourn the death and destruction that has befallen Haiti," Aristide said in a statement issued on his behalf by the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation.

"It is a tragedy that defies expression; a tragedy that compels all people to the highest levels of human compassion and solidarity," the statement said.

After decades of dictatorship, Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, became the country's first elected president in 1990 but was ousted by the military a few months later. In 2000, he again assumed the presidency but was forced into exile [by a 2nd military coup] in South Africa four years later amid growing violence in his country.

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WHAT RIGHTS ACTION DOES WITH “DISASTER” RELIEF FUNDS

In 1998, RA provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of funds and support to Hurricane Mitch victims in Honduras.

In 2004-2005, RA raised and distributed emergency funds to community groups in Haiti in response to the dual crisis of the military coup against the government of President Aristide and a series of hurricanes and tropical storms that devastated Haiti through 2004 and into 2005.

In 2005-2006, RA provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of funds and support to Hurricane Stan victims in Guatemala.

With disaster relief funds, RA funds and supports existing community and barrio-based organizations

 

RA is not doing or supporting immediate, emergency relief.  This is work for the Red Cross and large scale, humanitarian relief organizations that are being to operate on the ground in Haiti.

RA is appealing for funds, even as we try to contact people and organizations we have worked with in Haiti in the past – communication systems have been severely damaged.  Over the next days, we will send out more information, as well as an explanation of how funds will be used and by which North American and Haitian groups.  Over the next days, we will also recommend other groups, that work directly in Haiti, that you can make contributions to.

TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS FOR "HAITI RELIEF"

Make check payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
UNITED STATES:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
CANADA:  552 - 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm
Please redistribute this information

For more information: Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448

www.rightsaction.org / info@rightsaction.org:  Rights Action (with tax-deductible status in Canada and USA) funds and works with community development, environmental justice, human rights and disaster relief organizations in Guatemala and Honduras, and also in El Salvador, Haiti, Oaxaca and Chiapas.  Rights Action educates about and is involved in activism related to the underlying local, national and global causes of poverty and exploitation, environmental destruction, human rights violations and disasters.

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