CHF - Helping Rebuild Haiti

For every person lost in the Haiti earthquake there is a personal tragedy that we can hardly begin to understand, even when we hear the bald and terrible numbers of casualties repeated every day in the media.

Our staff in Haiti were surveying the damage in Port-au-Prince when they passed a house that had been completely flattened. Despite the destruction they realized it was the house of one of CHF’s community mobilizers, Cedanor St. Vil.

Cedanor told our people that he had come home early from work on Tuesday. Normally he would be home later, but had got a ride home early and got home just before 5pm – when the earthquake struck. His little four-year-old girl was napping, as was his middle child, a boy. He, his wife and his oldest son were in the bedroom together. Then the earthquake struck.

The walls caved in. Cedanor, his wife and son were trapped for 1 ½ hours in the rubble, but managed to dig themselves out. Cedanor went back in to the house to get his other two children. He managed to get his middle son, but, although he could hear his little daughter crying out for help, crying to her parents and to God, he couldn’t get through to her. Four hours after the earthquake struck, he finally managed to get her out from amongst the rubble – but she had already died.

Cedanor’s house has been completely destroyed. The surviving children are traumatized by the experience, especially the older boy.

Since the earthquake Cedanor has been staying with friends in another neighborhood, but when he returned to his house to collect his belongings, he found and it had been looted by thieves.

There are countless stories like those of Cedanor’s, of lives struck tragically. Please give generously to help in the reconstruction of Haiti.