September 5, 2008
By Mary Frances Schjonberg

Fay, Gustav, and Hanna, all tropical storms or hurricanes, have ravaged the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and at least two more storms – Ike and Josephine – could be headed into the area.

"Know that you are in our prayers, and those of this whole Church," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote September 5 in a message emailed to Diocese of Haiti Bishop Zache Duracin. "God never abandons us, even though the night seems long and dark."

The one-two-three punch that has hit the Caribbean with more to come, is "pretty unprecedented," said Matthew St. John, Episcopal Relief and Development's program officer for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The situation in Haiti is extremely serious and there's a possibility for it to get even more serious," he told ENS on September 5.

The situation is also severely hampering relief efforts, ERD said in a news release, which also contains information about how to help those efforts.

Hurricane Ike, which was a Category 3 hurricane as of 5:00 p.m. EDT September 5, is currently projected to sideswipe northern Haiti early on September 7 before it barrels toward the Bahamas, Cuba, south Florida or the Gulf of Mexico.

Behind Ike is Tropical Storm Josephine, which at 5:00 p.m. EDT September 5 was about 725 miles west of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands and moving northwest at eight miles an hour.

Hispaniola was still trying to assess the damage caused by Tropical Storm Fay on August 15 and Hurricane Gustav on August 26 when then-Hurricane Hanna arrived and stalled over the island earlier this week. At least 50 people died in Haiti from Fay's destruction. Gustav is said to have caused more than 70 death and September 5 estimates place the Haiti death toll from Hanna at 137.

St. John said that the Rev. Frantz Cole, the Haitian diocese's development officer, had been updating him as information reached Cole about Hanna's impact. With no power and widespread flooding, assessing needs has been hard, St. John said.

"In times like these, getting good information is always difficult," he said.

ERD has already helped its local partners care for 1,000 people in southern Haiti who were affected by Gustav, St. John said.

Gustav hit hard in the Haitian capital of Port au Prince. Sharon Babe, who teaches at the Episcopal University in Port-au-Prince, emailed ERD's senior marketing and communications director, Malaika Kamunanwire, on September 2 to report that the capital had lost many of its few remaining trees and that much of the city is without power. Babe noted that electricity often goes out in the city, but said, "Haiti is definitely having some real problems at the moment."

ERD and its partners in Haiti know that the normal post-disaster need for immediate food, water and shelter is complicated by the country's lack of infrastructure and the fact that the storms have come near the annual harvest times. St. John is receiving reports of crops having been severely damaged or destroyed. Such loss comes at a time when Haiti had already been hard-hit by the global food crisis prompted by poor harvests, diversion of crops into biofuels, and high energy prices, among other causes.

The Associated Press reported September 5 that a ship carrying more than 33 tons of food, water and other relief supplies managed to dock in Gonaives, the country's fourth-largest city. Hurricane Hanna inundated Gonaives. News reports tell of people stranded on rooftops for days. Deforested mountains surrounding the coastal city, which is located on a river plain, suffer from mudslides even in much less severe rainstorms.

UN peacekeepers worked through the night to repair a storm-damaged dock in the flooded city so that soldiers and dock workers could offload 15 metric tons of bottled water, 36,000 water-purification tablets, 16 metric tons of high-energy biscuits and two metric tons of rice, along with other supplies, the AP said. Seventy thousand people are estimated to be in emergency shelters.

St. John said he had reports of UN peacekeepers being instrumental in providing such logistics for the relief effort.

Hanna weakened as it moved out of the Caribbean but was nearing hurricane strength again as it neared the southeast coast of the U.S. Storm warnings are up for the East Coast as far north as Massachusetts.

The Episcopal Church of Haiti is the one of the largest dioceses of the Episcopal Church. It has nearly 83,000 baptized members in about 96 congregations. The diocese was founded in 1861 when the Rev. James Theodore Holly, one of the Episcopal Church's first African-American priests – ordained in 1856 at age 27 – left New Haven, Connecticut, for Haiti with 100 emigrants.

The Haitian church runs primary and secondary schools and a school for handicapped students, as well as vocational and agricultural training efforts, a university and a seminary.

The Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic, in the other Hispaniola nation, also runs schools, a seminary, clinics, camps and other outreach efforts. Some 6,000 Episcopalians worship in about 56 congregations, all of which are missions.

The Haitian diocese is part of Province II of the Episcopal Church, while the Dominican Republic diocese is part of Province IX. The latter's bishop, Julio Holguin, is a member of the Executive Council

Information on all Atlantic storms is available from NOAA's National Hurricane Center. A NOAA video loop showing storms in the Atlantic is available at http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/natl/loop-rgb.html.

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is Episcopal Life Media correspondent for Episcopal Church governance, structure, and trends, as well as news of the dioceses of Province II. She is based in Neptune, New Jersey, and New York City