Volunteers hurried toward Haiti and Texas for Ike relief

Organizations across the nation are mobilizing volunteers and equipment to curb the worst of the damage caused by Hurricane Ike in Haiti and Texas and groups across the Triangle are responding in kind.

The disparate situations in Texas and Haiti require two very different types of relief efforts.

In Texas relief efforts mainly focus on providing meals for people staying in shelters and repairing local infrastructure.

N.C. Baptist Men in Cary has dispatched more than 100 volunteers to Texas and is preparing 80000 meals a day to serve there beginning Tuesday said Richard Brunson" executive director of the organization.

""We sent out our three biggest feeding units and 100 trained volunteers"" he said.

The Triangle Area chapter of the American Red Cross sent 26 trained volunteers, said Lu Esposito, associate director of emergency services.

Whatever the government doesn't provide" we'll supply" she said.

Red Cross volunteers work in shelters, but some are specifically trained to work in technological and communication fields, Esposito said, and are therefore able to help in more skilled ways.

Tom Layton, spokesman of the Boone-based relief organization Samaritan's Purse, said his organization is setting up disaster relief units in churches in affected areas of Texas.

The group sent four tractor-trailers with tools, generators and other critical resources to supplement relief already being provided by the Red Cross and other relief groups.

In Haiti, an impoverished country with many deaths caused by the storm, medical relief is needed most.

Kathy Walmer, director of the Durham-based nonprofit Family Health Ministries, said that the situation in Haiti is so dire that her organization opted to concentrate its resources on Haiti.

There, the extreme poverty amplifies problems delivering aid.

This country is difficult in the best of circumstances"" she said.

Even before the storm, there were food riots, she said. The average income is $1 a day.

Part of the issue is just getting aid into the country"" Walmer said, explaining that the political system is in disarray.

U.S. volunteers are sometimes forced to carry their medical supplies on their person to avoid potentially corrupt port officials, who might lose or confiscate the aid equipment.

That lack of mobility can hinder their potential to provide aid.

The American organization Partners in Health employs Haitians in its relief efforts. Natives provide much-needed additional manpower and also have a strong desire to do whatever they can to help, said Andrew Marx, director of media inquiries.

Often they must brave dangerous conditions to deliver their care, he said. Partners in Health pays the Haitian workers who supplement their relief efforts.

The group focuses on basic relief, such as medical care and water supply.

We have an air shipment of 5-gallon collapsible water containers and water purification kits"" Marx said. The thing these people need most urgently is clean water.""



Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.