Haiti

Northwest Christians respond

to unimaginable disaster

with hope, faith, love

A “disaster of Biblical proportions” was a common description of the December 2004 tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 14 nations on the Indian Ocean. Thousands of churches and Christian ministries and churches responded by participating in a huge relief response.
Now, a little more than five years later, “Biblical proportions” is again spoken in news reports, but this time for a disaster much closer to American shores. The catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck the island nation of Haiti Jan. 12 has wrought unimaginable destruction, killed an estimated 200,000, and injured or displaced hundreds of thousands.

“The damage is so severe that it is difficult to say where to begin, I honestly do not know how they will be able to do it; I believe that the nations need to develop a Marshall Plan as they did in Europe after World War II; if not there will be a chaotic civil war,” wrote Joaquin Vargas, a field partner in Haiti for Vancouver, Wash.-based DELTA Ministries, in an e-mail to the ministry.