A MAJOR REMINDER ABOUT WHAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT!

Staying alive and protecting your family. Lots of lawlessness there now. That was a poor and desolate place before this, but it is really bad now.

Thought you might be interested in this report from my daughter Lisa .... it sounds absolutely horrible there.

Lisa is the Director of FilterPure, a non-profit organization which which provides low cost, point-of-use water filters for 3rd world countries.

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HAITI UPDATE - from FilterPure 1-17-10

Dear Friend,

I am sure you are all keeping up with the tragedy in Haiti and their great needs for relief. Through emails sent to FilterPure and our contacts in Haiti, we have seen that clean water is one of the greatest needs at the moment. Dehydration is now one of the greatest killers as the heat is taking its toll on the earthquake victims and the available water is now contaminated from the wreckage, casualties and debris.

Here is a segment of the recent update of the director of Pure Water for Haiti, who is our distributor in Haiti…

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We are all shocked about the enormous catastrophe happened this Tuesday afternoon in and around Port-au-Prince. It was grace of God that my wife Marie-Rose, my son Samuel, and I survived and are doing well. The house I rented in Delmas 33, Rue Jeremie 31, was well built and had no damages, except some items feel to the floor and broke.

Unfortunately the near neighborhood and so most in Port-au-Prince had major loss and damage. I brought with my vehicle more than 50 badly wounded people to several hospitals, but unfortunately almost 20 died before they received some help. The staff house has many cracks and all of us, my family, David, Sebastien, and Marie-Paule been staying on the street, but we are OK. Unfortunately the workers staff house is almost to collapse and we just went in to take the workers stuff away.

Yesterday we started providing ceramic filters in our nearby neighborhood and Sebastien and David installed plastic BSFs in the backyard of Matthew 25 house where a refugee camp is setup. I went to several areas and I can tell you that at least ½ of all multistory buildings collapsed, including the National Palais, Palais de Justice, so many schools, Hotel Montana, Hotel Carib, Hotel Christopher (UN Headquarters), Caribbean Market, other government buildings, main penitentiary (most of the >5,000 inmates escaped), business buildings, and thousands of homes … still thousands under the buildings, road blocked due to debris, besides a major lack of water, no phone communication, no public power, almost no public transportation, no gasoline, etc.

I have seen thousands of corpse left on each site of the streets, so far the Government unable to bring them away and a high risk of other diseases coming along soon. Ten thousands survived left Port-au-Prince on foot or whatever vehicle was available. Port-au-Prince is no longer as you know or as you have seen. I don’t have any word … just silence and prayer.

In the meanwhile we got some update from the provinces … there are major issues also in Jacmel, Leogane, Petit Goaves, and Carbarete. I’m still very concerned about some team members I have no contact yet. Regarding short term disaster relief I would highly recommend us to concentrate in one or two areas only. There is a refugee camp just across our filter factory, several in Cite Soleil, a couple in Delmas … where we should provide safe drinking water and hopefully medical services from Petti Fisher and her team. Unfortunately there is a lack of water … no water trucks on the road and no or not much water provided from CAMEP. First we need to get water to the camps, then we can treat the water. Also, if anything is coming in for us through the DR or via Airplane to pickup, please let me know and I can be in Port-au-Prince.

Peace, Roman