 "Photo: Taner Pasamehmetoglu")
Last week, a high-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti—a country already damaged from poverty and disease—as well as the lives of Utahns with connections to the island nation.
More than 70,000 dead bodies have been collected with estimated death tolls as high as 200,000, according to ABC News. With communications down, it’s hard for people in the United States to contact loved ones in Haiti.
Stessie Dort, a junior in exercise physiology, is still waiting to find out what the status is her of family in Haiti. Although Dort’s immediate family lives in Utah, most of her extended family lives in Haiti. Dort said she was relieved to find out Saturday that her dad’s immediate family is well, though the condition of her mom’s side, with the exception of three family members, is still unknown.
“It’s been an emotional couple of days,” Dort said. “It doesn’t make dealing with the first week (of school) easy.”
In the middle of the tragedy, Dort is hoping to reach her family and trying to support her parents, she said.
Chris Gibson, a third-year graduate medical student, was in Haiti a week before the earthquake and left Port-au-Prince 48 hours before it struck. He witnessed diseases in Haiti that aren’t imaginable anywhere, he said. The infrastructure and health was already in poor conditions before the earthquake, and now it has gotten worse.
“It’s difficult to imagine that (this is all happening) just a couple hundred miles from the U.S.,” Gibson said.
With Haiti already being an impoverished country, building it up will only take longer, Dort said. Gibson said he hopes the aid groups will become more efficient and work together under a crisis situation.
Gibson spent his time offering medical work with Project MediShare, an organization that runs through seven medical schools in the country. Gibson went with the University of Texas chapter, where he once attended, because the U doesn’t have a chapter.
Dort is a member of Lift a Life, a volunteer organization providing humanitarian aid. It will be in Haiti for a week starting Feb. 6 on a health relief trip. Dort said that as much as she would like to go, her father thinks it is best for her to stay in class.
Dort said she is eager to give service when possible, as she did in 2006 on a Lift a Life trip to the Dominican Republic.
The United Nations Children’s Fund chapter at the U is giving students a chance to assist those in Haiti. UNICEF will be hosting an all-day dance party Saturday, with all of its proceeds going to Haiti.
On Jan. 26, UNICEF plans to hold a vigil at the Utah State Capitol, hoping Utahns will support UNICEF in its aid to Haiti, said Sayra Moran, chairwoman of advocacy for UNICEF.
“My hope is that the community will reunite, (becoming) stronger in coming years than it has in the past,” Dort said.
With all the assistance Haiti is receiving, Dort said “it’s comforting knowing people have an understanding and care for people they don’t know.”
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