NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The five-member BGR assessment team is on the ground in Haiti, driving toward Port-au-Prince. They are accompanied by Mark Rutledge, who has 26 years of experience serving as an International Mission Board worker in Haiti. The team will be connecting with Haitian Baptist leaders, surveying earthquake damage, and delivering relief supplies.

A strong aftershock measuring 6.1 in magnitude struck Port-au-Prince at 6:03 a.m., Jan. 20, according to news reports. The shock sent people scrambling for open ground as buildings damaged by last week’s quake shuddered and rubble began falling to the ground. Eyewitnesses said people already traumatized by the horrors of the past week cried and screamed at the new tremor. More than 40 significant aftershocks have hit since the Jan. 12 quake.

Members of the assessment team reported they did not feel the aftershock at their base in the Dominican Republic. However, Steve Leach, a member of Round Grove Baptist Church in Miller, Mo., who operates an independent hospital in northwest Haiti, reported the aftershock “brought down some of the damaged buildings that were still standing and will keep anyone from going back to what buildings are still standing for many days to come.  With so many severe aftershocks over the last week and now another new quake, who knows when people who have a place to go will feel safe to return there.”

Leach said about 1,200 refugees have come to the hospital for treatment and he has been sending trucks into the capital to look for survivors with family who live near the hospital.

“We live in a place that is about as far from the capital as you can get and still be in Haiti and yet we have watched these very poor people trying desperately to figure out a way to get their family members out here so they can take care of them,” Leach said. “The truck drivers are less and less willing to (drive into the city) as the situation in Port deteriorates.”

Relief efforts are struggling to get essential relief supplies to hundreds of thousands of desperate people, but destroyed infrastructure and disorganization are hampering the effort. Officials are concerned that the desperation people feel will boil over into violence. Looters by the hundreds have been fighting each other with broken bottles, clubs and other weapons over whatever goods they can still find in damaged stores.

“Pray specifically for God to give those in control wisdom to direct the relief effort,” Leach said. 

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