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Staff Photo by Allison Kwesell/Chattanooga Times Free Press April Hess, head nurse at the Haiti Gospel Mission, comforts 14-year-old Deyana Sevil while Christina Christiansen, a volunteer from Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters in Norfolk, Va., cleans her wound at the Haiti Gospel Mission Clinic in Despinos, Haiti. Deyana did not go to the clinic until five days after the earthquake, and her wound was covered in maggots as a result.
Georges Charles is at a loss for words after hearing of the 5.9-magnitude aftershock that hit Haiti Wednesday morning.
“I don’t know how much more this country can take,” said the 31-year-old TVA engineer and Haitian native.
Mr. Charles still hasn’t heard from his brother Jean-Marie Charles, who was in Port-au-Prince when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the capital on Jan. 12.
“It’s very heartbreaking,” he said. “I’m still hanging on to hope, but every day it gets harder and harder. I’m trying to concentrate the best I can, keep myself occupied with work and do what I can to bring awareness and raise funds.”
Finding any news of his brother means getting closure.
“You hear of the thousands and thousands already dead and just piled on and buried,” he said. “I need to have closure, I need to know of his whereabouts.”
There’s been more than 60 aftershocks, or smaller earthquakes, since the major quake hit Haiti, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The one Wednesday was centered about 40 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince.
“Haiti is located very close to one of the boundaries that separate one tectonic plate from another and (they) are very prone to earthquake activity, very much like the San Andreas Fault,” said Christine Powell, professor of geophysics at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis.
“Occasionally following a large earthquake, like the one suffered in Haiti, there are usually numerous aftershocks that die away with time,” she added. “Unfortunately, we can’t, as scientists, predict when they will occur.”
An aftershock is the same as an earthquake, she said, except that they are of a smaller magnitude. Aftershocks usually continue for several weeks but with lesser frequency and magnitude each time.
Last week’s earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 people in Haiti, left 250,000 injured and made 1.5 million homeless, the Associated Press reported.
Chattanooga’s Ron Bishop, founder and president of SCORE International, said a U.S. marine in Port-au-Prince described the aftershock as “being on a surf board on top of a building.”
“People are afraid, there’s a lot of fear in Haiti,” said Mr. Bishop, who is planning to travel to the Dominican Republic next week to work from the border.
Although no major injuries or further devastation has been reported from Wednesday’s aftershock, Dr. Powell said such quakes can have a great impact.
“The problem with earthquakes is that the main shock will cause a lot of devastation and weaken structures,” she said. “When aftershocks occur, even though the ground might not move as much as with the main shake, the ground is moving damaged buildings so there is increase potential for those buildings to suffer even more damage.
“Given the fact that the buildings there are not built to any earthquake code and given the kind of construction there, it’s fair to say that no building is safe at this point,” she added.
Some local agencies who have volunteers and workers in the country don’t report any further damage or casualties from the aftershock, while others are still waiting to hear from their workers.
“We’ve not received any word to say that’s going to affect them at all,” said Douglas LeRoy, with the Church of God International Offices in Cleveland, Tenn., which has five people from the United States currently in Haiti.
Betty Miles, board member for the American Haitian Foundation in Signal Mountain, said they still haven’t heard back from their teams who were working near the epicenter of the latest aftershock.
“We are just very anxious and frantic to hear from someone on the ground to see if there’s any damage to our school,” she said.
The organization, which has a school for about 900 children near Port-au-Prince which now is serving as a feeding station for refugees. She said they recently sent $11,000 to purchase more food, which has gone up in price more than 10 times since the first earthquake.
“It’s hard to have any communication, on a good day in Haiti the streets are full of potholes the size of a truck, who knows that, coupled with all of the damage, what has happened,” she said. “I can only think they are walking to the countryside.”
In between the chaos, relief efforts continue.
Save the Children selected the Chattanooga-based Children’s Nutrition Program to coordinate relief efforts in Leogane, located about 18 miles west of Port-au-Prince. The program will provide shelter, water and sanitation and set up a supply chain for relief efforts.
Children’s Nutrition also is coordinating aid flights which began to land Tuesday on an abandoned road being used as an improvised runway, according to members of a coalition of organizations.
Two Tennessee Air National Guard C-130 aircraft bound for Haiti also departed Tuesday from the 118th Airlift Wing in Nashville.
The two crews of seven people each stopped at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, where they picked up relief supplies. The aircraft will also be bringing back Americans from Haiti to United States, according to a news release.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Times Free Press staff photographer Allison Kwesell is in Haiti with locally based relief groups. She is sending photos and dispatches sharing her personal observations about what she sees this week. See the paper this week and on Sunday.
MORE ONLINE
Go to timesfreepress.com/haitiearthquake for all the Times Free Press’ stories, photos and videos on the disaster. Get information about how to help.
CLOSER TO HOME
* Chattanooga sits in an earthquake zone, the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone.
* The zone has not produced a damaging earthquake in recorded history but it’s very long and active for the central and eastern part of the United States.
* Experts say residents should be aware that they could experience earthquakes.
* While people shouldn’t be frightened, simple precautions such as not placing very heavy objects on top shelves should be taken in case of an earthquake.
Source: Christine Powell, professor of geophysics at the Center for Earthquake Research and Information, University of Memphis.
Perla Trevizo joined the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 2007 and covers immigration/diversity issues and higher education. She holds a master’s degree in newswire journalism from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Texas. In 2011 she participated in the Bringing Home the World international reporting fellowship program sponsored by the International Center for Journalists, producing a series on Guatemalan immigrants for which she ...
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