Lots of air­planes and heli­copters are arriv­ing in Haiti today car­ry­ing work­ers and sup­plies for the earth­quake rav­aged coun­try. For this round-up of Haiti sto­ries, we want to focus on peo­ple who are going or have been to Haiti before.

From the UK’s Wigan Today, we read about this fire­fighter who has left for Haiti to look for sur­vivors in the rubble.

Self­less res­cue tech­ni­cian Simon Cord­ing is one of a team of UK fire­fight­ers who vol­un­teered to fly out to the disaster-hit Caribbean coun­try from Gatwick overnight.

The 35-year-old, from Platt Bridge, was one of a 61-strong UK res­cue team due to deploy to Haiti as soon as the air­port reopened fol­low­ing heavy snow.

Simon, who has been a fire­man for 12 years and is cur­rently sta­tioned at Sale Fire Sta­tion, will help with the mas­sive res­cue oper­a­tion after a series of quakes hit the poverty-stricken coun­try on Tues­day night.
…

The promptly-arranged UK Fire Ser­vice Inter­na­tional Search and Res­cue Team, which includes eight mem­bers of the Greater Man­ches­ter Fire Res­cue Ser­vice, will use two search dogs and 12 tonnes of equipment.

On their arrival at the quake-hit coun­try, which together with the Domini­can Repub­lic occu­pies His­pan­iola Island, the UK con­tin­gent is set to form two teams to search for sur­vivors around the clock at sep­a­rate sites.

They will be using heavy break­ing equip­ment, spe­cial­ist cam­eras and lis­ten­ing devices in a bid to clear rub­ble and iden­tify survivors.

From South Dakota’s Arugs Leader, writer Peter Har­ri­man talked to peo­ple who have been on mis­sion trips to Haiti.

Pam Plaiser of Tea founded Mission-Haiti with her hus­band, Mike. They have worked in the coun­try about 15 years. She says Haitians have the strength to deal with disaster.

“The peo­ple are one of the neat­est groups you will find. They have this super-strong will to sur­vive. They live in sur­vival mode every day, but they just don’t give up.”

Joe Rainboth’s brother, Lee, has lived in Haiti three years in the moun­tain vil­lage of Mizak, about 50 miles south­west of the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince. Joe Rain­both of Spearfish says his brother sees the same thing in Haitians that Plaiser does.

“There is some­thing in that pop­u­la­tion of Haiti that often gets over­looked. Haiti itself doesn’t have much in the way of emer­gency response or orga­nized com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But as a peo­ple, they are the type to pitch in and help each other,” Joe Rain­both says.

Emily Knut­son of Sioux Falls accom­pa­nied Plasier on a mis­sion trip last November.

“The coun­try itself is absolutely incred­i­ble. It is beau­ti­ful, but it is heart­break­ing to see so much poverty,” she says. “Whether you are in the moun­tains or in the city, it is like one big slum you never leave.”

Finally from Indiana’s Star Press, Seth Slabaugh writes this story of a Nurse who hopes to head to Haiti this weekend.

For a year, Muncie nurse Con­nie Bald­win has been plan­ning, pack­ing and fund rais­ing for her annual trip to Haiti, where she treats kids for worms and other infections.

Now, because of the earth­quake, she might not get to go on the trip sched­uled to leave this weekend.

“It would be a huge dis­ap­point­ment,” she said. “With all the prepa­ra­tion we go through, the actual going to Haiti is like an anti-climax.”

The U.S. Depart­ment of State has issued a travel alert urg­ing U.S. cit­i­zens to avoid travel to Haiti because of the exten­sive dam­age, extremely dif­fi­cult com­mu­ni­ca­tion and lawlessness.

But this wouldn’t be the first time a med­ical team from St. Fran­cis of Assisi Uni­ver­sity Parish has gone to Haiti against the state department’s advice. Besides being poverty stricken, Haiti also has been vic­tim­ized in recent years by polit­i­cally moti­vated vio­lence and hurricanes.

Bald­win had to laugh Wednes­day after­noon when an Amer­i­can broad­cast jour­nal­ist report­ing from Haiti was asked by an anchor­woman back in the stu­dio if Haitians were receiv­ing enough food and bot­tled water after the earthquake.

“They didn’t have bot­tled water and food before the earth­quake hit, much less now,” Bald­win said. “The only thing good I see com­ing from the earth­quake is it might make the world aware of how great the needs in Haiti are. Peo­ple don’t real­ize how poor they are and how much help they need.”

We wanted to focus on these indi­vid­u­als because their small voices need to be increased in vol­ume. The small voices of the thou­sands of peo­ple who put up their own money, leave their com­fort­able lives for a time, and help to do good even dur­ing disasters.

There were a cou­ple of very loud voices that said hor­ri­ble things yes­ter­day. We won­der if their tone would change if they went on a mis­sion trip, or if the tragedy wasn’t sep­a­rated from them by a body of water. Those voices really depressed us yes­ter­day, so we wanted to find some others.

Like

Unlike