'You’re kind of born into being resilient': Maritimers urge support for Haiti after catastrophic earthquake

SAINT JOHN, N.B. -

Maritimers who’ve helped with previous humanitarian efforts in Haiti say citizens will once again persevere through their country’s latest crisis.

The death toll from Saturday’s magnitude 7.2 earthquake in southwestern Haiti continues to rise. 

The island has a difficult history of violence and disasters, but Maritimers who’ve spent time in the country say Haitians have a strong culture of facing and withstanding adversity.

"You’re kind of born into being resilient," says Dr. Colleen O’Connell, a Fredericton physician who’s made about 40 trips over 20 years to Haiti, working with locals to build capacity for physical rehabilitation.

O’Connell says international help is needed in Haiti but adds residents know best where aid should go immediately.

"You need to work with the national providers and with the local partners," says O’Connell. "They are the experts."

Former CTV News journalist Andy Campbell reported from Haiti in 2004 and says the country left a lasting impression.

"The struggles there are so vastly different from what anyone in this part of the world knows and so very basic," says Campbell. "We’re talking water, sanitation, food, shelter."

Campbell later reported extensively on Maritime fundraising efforts following the country’s catastrophic 2010 earthquake. 

Those efforts included the construction of the Sgt. Mark Gallagher Vocational School in Port-au-Prince, named after the Maritime RCMP officer who died during the 2010 quake while in Haiti on a UN mission. 

Eugene Lewis, a retired professor of electrical engineering who worked on the vocational school project, says he hopes the building’s location away from the quake’s epicentre will limit any impacts. Lewis says there’s been no update on the school so far.

"It’s in the western part of Port-au-Prince, which I’m told recently is difficult to get to," says Lewis, mentioning riots in the area.

"It just sickens to me think these people are going through this again because they really don’t have the resources to deal with it."

Bill Lawlor, provincial director of the Canadian Red Cross in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, says no requests for local personnel haven’t been received to date.

"Certainly the Haitian Red Cross has a pretty good capacity in terms of local volunteers and it’s always preferred the local volunteers are utilized first," says Lawlor.

“You may recall during the 2010 earthquake there was almost a secondary disaster within a disaster because people had sent and deployed all kinds of resources including people and materials when in fact they weren’t needed at that time and there was no ability to receive them due to damage that was done to the infrastructure, be it the ports or airport."

Several humanitarian organizations are now collecting donations for earthquake relief in Haiti.