General News and Announcements

January 13, 2010

United Church of Canada staff are working together with partners in Haiti and with other emergency response efforts in the wake of the earthquake that struck the Haitian capital Tuesday afternoon.

Massive Destruction

Photo by Globovisión. Used under permission of Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic Licence.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were buried alive when a major earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, the capital of impoverished Haiti, on Tuesday, January 12, 2010. The magnitude 7.0 quake sent panic-stricken people into the streets.

ACT Alliance, the network of churches and Christian aid agencies that enables global responses to emergencies, reports that offices, hotels, houses, and shops collapsed, and people were screaming "Jesus, Jesus", not knowing where to run.

The presidential palace and Roman Catholic cathedral lay in ruins, and many other churches have been destroyed. Members of ACT Alliance are already in place, assisting those affected by the earthquake. The ACT Secretariat in Geneva is coordinating the relief operations of its members, and more details will follow in the coming hours.

The city is without electricity, the telephone network has broken down. The UN headquarters has collapsed. The office of ACT member Christian Aid was destroyed, but staff were unharmed and are now responding to the emergency.

In 2004 more than 3,000 people died because of Hurricane Jeanne, which passed over the northwest city of Gonaives.  The same area was hit again in 2008 when four tropical storm systems passed through the region. In 2004 political instability led to the ousting of the President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

United Church Response

Mardi Tindal, Moderator of The United Church of Canada, has expressed her concern for partners and friends in Haiti, and encouraged Canadians to join in prayers and offer support to relief and reconstruction efforts.

The United Church will call for donations to its Emergency Response Fund. Watch this site for more information.

World Council of Churches General Secretary, the Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, also expressed condolences and solidarity with the people of Haiti. "Once again they have experienced the great burdens of anguish, damage, and death because of a natural catastrophe. They have already carried many burdens of political instability and poverty," Fykse Tveit says.

The United Church works with two partner organizations in Haiti:

• The Methodist Church of Haiti (a district of the regional Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas)
• The Karl Lévêque Cultural Institute (ICKL)

For further information, contact:

• Jim Hodgson
  Caribbean/Central America Regional Program Coordinator
  Justice, Global and Ecumenical Relations Unit (JGER)
  Tel: 416-231-5931 ext. 4013
  Toll-free: 1-800-268-3781 ext. 4013
  E-mail: Jim Hodgson