What the MSM is Not Telling You About Haiti

"Haiti Update by Phil Johnson

6:00pm (EST) Update from Ron Pierre: "I was told a few minutes ago by one of our board members who was able to make contact with our people in Haiti about an hour ago, that an Emergency Response Team from the State of Florida was attempting to bring in fuel to the compound via helicopter. Six doctors from Samaritan's Purse have landed at the airport and are currently making their way up the mountain to the mission. The bodies are piling up at the mission and our morgue is filled to capacity. We are out of gasoline and dangerously low on diesel fuel. Water is in short supply so pray that the pumps and filters arrive within 24 hours. The airplane with these supplies aboard was not able to land yesterday."

y friend Ron Pierre, board president for Baptist Haiti Mission, sent this update:

So many of you are inquiring regarding the situation in Haiti and particularly at the mission. I’ve just now been able to make telephone contact with one of our missionaries, Chris Lieb at Baptist Haiti Mission. Thankfully, the connection was clear and intact long enough for me to inquire as to the current situation. I honestly do not know where to start, the conditions in Haiti are desperate and deteriorating by the moment in spite of all that we hear relative to the aid that is "pouring in" from the US and other countries. I am simply going to list some of the things he was able to relate to me without regard to sequence. Those of you who have been there and/or are familiar with the compound in Fermathe will better understand the conditions, however, all of you will gain a sense of the severity of what our people face. Our hospital is filled with people 250-300 people lying in the halls, many, many with serious injuries that need immediate attention, more people outside and surrounding areas with a constant flow coming in. Our doctors are exhausted, most all of our staff are assigned to the hospital. Thousands of people sleeping in the park just below in Petion-Ville, afraid to return to their homes. At least 10 to 15 thousand people are sleeping in the park near the airport with roving gangs of hoodlums attempting to steal whatever "aid" arrives before it gets to the helpless people. People all along the roads with serious injuries, multiple fractures and puncture wounds; bleeding and unattended. Chris passed women grasping their dying children in their arms, after a while it becomes overwhelming because there is not a thing that you can do about it.. Countless small children wandering about without any parents or adult oversight. The initial stunned calm that was over the population is rapidly turning to despair and in many cases anger. There is a real danger of things turning very ugly, potentially for those who are beginning to arrive to help. For most of the "search and rescue" people that have arrived or will arrive, it will be far, far too late to save lives. The stench of death everywhere and is overwhelming. Many places have seen no help whatsoever. There are piles of bodies in many roads and some have become "roadblocks" in and of themselves. Many people are simply in shock, most have lost at least one or more family members. Vehicles are abandon, roads are blocked or down to one tight lane as large chucks of the mountain have fallen. Chris gave out about 100 very large heavy duty tarps today to be used as temporary shelters and it got very ugly as the last ones were dispersed. The actual process of giving out aid is going to be quite dangerous the longer it takes to reach the people. There appears to be no oversight of the "teams" arriving. They are equipped but do not know where to go or how to get there. It may improve but it is going to continue to be a big problem. Medical supplies are running low at our hospital; I asked for a list of the supplies that they need we can be a bit more specific in our requests when aid does arrive. We have a need for anesthesiologists and orthopedic surgeons. Any medical personnel would be a blessing. Chris commented that he has seen things over the past several days that he hoped he would never see and would chose never to see again. Many people are simply walking around in what is really clinical shock. Everything is closed down; no stores, no markets, water is in tight supply and is running out fast. People walk up and down the mountain just looking for their families; there is no transportation. The Samaritans Purse people were supposed to arrive today with Greta Van Susteren of FOXNews.com. The plane circled for about an hour but could not land. They returned to Miami. The same was true for several other planes caring supplies and aid for the mission. We desperately need a pump and water filters that are coming in. All in all, there are no words to describe what is taking place, the TV news gives inadequate for those of you who know Haiti, the conditions, the culture, the people. Two of our churches in PAP have been completely destroyed, we do not have reports on the many churches in outlying rural areas yet. Most every school in PAP is destroyed, personnel killed. It will be a long, long time before there will be any schools in PAP. Our chaplains have been ministering to every single person who comes to the hospital; scripture is read and they pray with each and every one. We do have some very dedicated people. Our mission families are all accounted for and remain uninjured; we need to uphold them in prayer during these times. God certainly gives the strength and grace when needed. They recognize that the tasks before them are humanly impossible; They also recognize that prayer is the greatest asset they have in this trial. We are trying to keep the website current with pictures, video, and various other feeds . . . . go to www.bhm.org. It may be a bit slow due to traffic but it does function. Our thanks to all of you who have inquired, emailed, called, and written and otherwise displayed your love and concern, this has been equally overwhelming! It is now almost 2:00 am Friday morning EST and time ready ourselves for a new day. Again, I close with Psalm 20, verses 1 and 2: "May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob protect you! May he send you help from the sanctuary and give you support from Zion!" --R.A.Pierre

The photos above are from AP and other news sources. The Washington Post has a large and growing collection of photos, all heartbreaking. Pray for Haiti, and do whatever you can to help.

Relief Agencies We Trust:

Baptist Haiti Mission
Children's Hunger Fund
Mission Aviation Fellowship

--MORE--"

Related:

Haiti earthquake: death toll may hit 200,000

Anger has turned to violence on the streets of Haiti as survivors lose patience with the painfully slow process of getting international aid after the earthquake that authorities say may have killed 200,000 people.
Haiti's shell-shocked government gave the United States control over its main airport to bring order to aid flights from around the world and speed relief to the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Trucks piled with corpses have been carrying bodies to hurriedly excavated mass graves outside the city but thousands of bodies still are believed buried under rubble.
"We have already collected around 50,000 dead bodies," Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, Haiti's interior minister told Reuters. "We anticipate there will be between 100,000 and 200,000 dead in total, although we will never know the exact number."

Around 40,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves.

Although doctors, rescue teams and supplies had been flying into the Haitian capital, Port au Prince, a series of bottlenecks meant aid was not getting to those who needed it most....

I heard 500,000 even.

"Leading Senator Youri Latortue told the AP that 500,000 could be dead, but acknowledged that nobody really knows."

"Pennies for Haiti, Billions for Israel

And the Palestinians are invisible, too!!

Cuba is Missing...From US Reports on the International Response to Haiti’s Earthquake

There are only two US media outlets that have reported on Cuba’s response to the deadly 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti. One was Fox News, which claimed, wrongly, that the Cubans were absent from the list of neighboring Caribbean countries providing aid. The other was the Christian Science Monitor (a respected news organization that recently shut down its print edition), which reported correctly that Cuba had dispatched 30 doctors to the stricken nation.

The Christian Science Monitor, in a second article, quoted Laurence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense and now based at the Center for American Progress, as saying that the US, which is leading the relief efforts in Haiti, should “consider tapping the expertise of neighboring Cuba,” which he noted, “has some of the best doctors in the world--we should see about flying them in.”

As for the rest of the US media, they have simply ignored Cuba.

In fact, left unmentioned is the reality that Cuba already had over 400 doctors posted to Haiti to help with the day-to-day health needs of this poorest nation in the Americas, and that those doctors were the first to respond to the disaster, setting up a hospital right next to the main hospital in Port-au-Prince which collapsed in the earthquake....

The American emergency response, predictably, has focussed primarily, at least in terms of personnel and money, on sending the hugely costly and inefficient US military--a fleet of aircraft and an aircraft carrier--a factor that should be considered when examining that $100 million figure the Obama administration claims is being allocated to emergency aid to Haiti. Considering that the cost of operating an aircraft carrier, including crew, is roughly $2 million a day, just sending a carrier to Port-au-Prince for two weeks accounts for a quarter of the announced American aid effort, and while many of the military personnel sent there will certainly be doing actual aid work, delivering supplies and guarding supplies, many, given America’s long history of brutal military/colonial control of Haiti, will inevitably be spending their time ensuring continued survival and control of the parasitic pro-US political elite in Haiti.

Otherwise, the US has basically ignored the ongoing day-to-day human crisis in Haiti, while Cuba has been doing the yeoman work of providing basic health care.

But that’s not a story that the American corporate media want to tell."

"After a day of deliveries, US ship runs out of aid

Helicopters sit ready to go from this US aircraft carrier off Haiti, but there's a problem: after a day of frantic aid runs there is simply nothing left to deliver.

"We have lift, we have communications, we have some command and control, but we don't have much relief supplies to offer," said Branch, who commands the battle group led by the nuclear-powered Carl Vinson.

Related: U.S. to House Haitians at Gitmo and Other Horror Stories

Video: Haiti Earthquake Caught on Tape

Photos: The devastation