suffering in hurricane ravaged Florida and nearby Haiti, where possible 2,000 people died and over a quarter of a million people became homeless since Tropical Storm Jeanne pounded the small Caribbean nation last week.
"Another 100 were killed in neighboring countries and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless across the region," said Christian Aid, part of the international development-agency alliance, Action for Churches Together (ACT), which is involved in rebuilding and humanitarian aid efforts.
Earlier this month Hurricane Ivan on September 7, tore across the Caribbean region, killing 37 people in Grenada and 19 in Jamaica, bringing electricity and water supplies down and causing widespread damage to homes, schools and hospitals, according to estimates.
Christian organizations were also involved in humanitarian aid across the Atlantic in Florida, where Hurricane Jeanne tore a fresh path of destruction as it marched up the already storm-ravaged U.S. state.
News reports said the fourth hurricane in six weeks shut down much of the state and prompted recovery plans on a scale never before seen in the nation.
BAPTISTS HELP
Baptist volunteers backed by the Red Cross were among those distributing food and other supplies to people living in hard hit areas.
Earlier over 1,500 Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers from 25 states have been cooking meals, cutting up fallen trees and providing childcare in six states in the path of destruction left by Hurricane Ivan from the Florida Panhandle to the Midwest, Baptist Press (BP) news agency said. President George W. Bush declared Florida a "major disaster area", which allows for increased federal financial and aid.
"Doesn’t it seem like the world is falling apart? Four hurricanes in the span of like six weeks, some colleges haven’t even started yet!," said Christian student Cheri Johnson in an e-mail to BosNewsLife from California, another state that has suffered because of storms in recent times.
At least six people died in the latest storm as it plowed across Florida’s midsection in a virtual rerun for many residents still trying to regroup from hurricanes that have crisscrossed the Southeast since mid-August, The Associated Press (AP) reported from the region where millions of people were forced to evacuate their homes.
Jeanne follows Charley, which hammered Florida’s southwest coast August 13; Frances, which struck the same area as Jeanne September 5; and Ivan, which blasted the western Panhandle September 16. The three storms reportedly caused billions of dollars in damage and killed at least 73 people in Florida alone, said AP
"FALLEN TREES"
"I never want to go through this again," 8-year-old Katie Waskiewicz, who checked out the fallen trees and broken roof tiles in her Palm Beach Gardens neighborhood after riding out Jeanne with her family told AP. "I was running around the house screaming."
Children were even screaming louder in Haiti, where unlike the United States, authorities seemed ill prepared to deal with the aftermath of devastating storms. United Nations peacekeepers told reporters they were sending reinforcements to help keep order among desperate survivors who have been looting aid trucks and mobbing food distribution centers.
That assistance came too late for a boy who was struck and killed by a truck as crowds of hungry flood victims pressed up against the gates of a warehouse storing food aid, said Roseline Corvil, an official of the aid agency CARE International. The boy, thought to be 13, was hit as the driver attempted to leave. "I presume that he did not see the child," she said in a statement obtained Monday, September 27.
300,000 HOMELESS
Haiti officials said more than 1,500 people were killed, but hundreds are still missing. Some 300,000 people are living on rooftops and sidewalks, mostly in the northwestern city of Gonaives. In small signs of hope, a Christian village for orphanage children on the outskirts was saved from damage, the evangelical news agency IDEA reported.
Earlier, Hurricane Ican also spared a clinic of ministry For Haiti With Love in the northwestern town of Cap-Haitian, Mission Network News (MNN), a Christian broadcaster and news service said. In addittion For Haiti With Love’s headquarters across the sea in Palm Harbor, in western Florida, was also spared, MNN added, citing ministry officials.
However fire has damaged part of the Cap-Haitien hospital, making it difficult to provide enough medical attention to the mainly impoverished population, ministry representative Eva DeHart told MNN. DeHart’s For Haiti With Love and other Christian aid organizations also want to reach people with the Gospel despite dangerous situations.
Their efforts come just days after Haitians mourned evangelical radio pastor Jean-Moles Lovinsky Bertomieux who was shot and killed September 13 in his way to work, IDEA said. For over two decades he presented the popular program "Morning Manna". He leaves behind his 6-months pregnant wife, the evangelical news agency added. Haitian Christians in Florida have prayed for their native nation and the United States at a time when more storms and troubles are expected in the region.
