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Haiti Earthquake

Written on: January 14th, 2010 by: in Blog Posts

Today’s News-Journal article documents the response of Delaware’s Haitian community to the terrible tragedy unfolding in Haiti following the massive earthquake on Sunday. The Seaford Library and Cultural Center has Creole-speaking staff members who may be able to assist in locating information and resources (302-629-2524).

The U.S. Department of State’s website provides information about the government’s response to the crisis, including links for giving donations and a phone number to find information about family members on the island (1-888-407-4747).
UPDATE: CNN recently made a searchable missing persons database available at this link.

The site also provides links to reliable relief organizations who are receiving donations and offers of assistance. Unfortunately there are already scam artists and frauds taking advantage of the situation, and numerous rumors that may inhibit responses by various organizations. The Google crisis response page and Poynter.com have additional resources, advice and contact information for those choosing to donate or assist.

UPDATE: The Delaware Black Caucus in partnership with the Delaware Community Foundation has established an earthquake relief fund. Click here to go to the DCF site to make a donation. Delaware State Treasure Velda Jones-Potter will provide fiscal oversight for this fund, which has the support of a broad coalition of Delaware organizations and businesses.

The Middletown Thrall Library in Vermont has created this resource and information page which includes contact information for relief agencies, how to find a reliable organization to donate to, and other useful resources.

Twitter is still a source of news and announcements, despite the large-scale outages of the telephone network in Haiti. The #helphaiti tag has information in English, French, and Creole. Carel Pedre is also tweeting actively with news and photographs from Port-au-Prince and the Associated Press twitter account is devoted to Haiti news at this time. More formal breaking news from Haiti can be found at the Alltop news aggregator site at this link. The collaborative crisis response website Ushahdi is also providing information for people attempting to locate relatives and resources.

Yesterday, Google acquired the first post-quake satellite photos and made them available in Google Maps. They give some sense of the devastation.

UPDATE: The Delaware Haitian Community Center near Wilmington can be contacted at (302) 998-2015 and is located at 1500 East Newport Gap Pike, Wilmington.