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Hurricane Matthew
Hi <<First Name>>,
Infamous Hurricane Matthew roared over the Plateau Tuesday into Wednesday. The worst of it hit us during Tuesday night.
While we thankfully did not suffer the extreme devastation that the south of Haiti experienced, we took a hard hit. All mud homes suffered some damage from the wind and rain stripping of the siding.
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For most of them, the mud fell inside, covering belongings, making a huge mess, and exposing the people inside to the elements. Some can be patched up, others will need to be completely rebuilt.
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The ravine (usually dry) carried a colossal amount of raging rainwater runoff, far overflowing its banks. It rendered the road to Anse-Rouge completely impassible and irreparable by manual labor alone.
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It obliterated gardens. One family lost their entire plantain harvest. The flood waters carried away another family's huge stockpile of charcoal to sell. The water carried away livestock as well. Other livestock died from exposure to the elements. Some people lost up to 15 sheep at once. Losing livestock like this is the equivalent to suddenly losing hundreds of dollars out of your savings account. For people who are already struggling daily to survive, these losses of their very livelihood are devastating.
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In preparation for the hurricane, we opened up the school and the church to receive people, and we established a committee of community members who were in place to respond to needs as they arose. They did such an amazing job! One man even walked around to people's houses in the storm to see how they were doing and to urge them to seek shelter in the school if necessary. On Wednesday, after the storm subsided, the committee took a small stockpile of food that we had stored in advance and made sacks of emergency provisions to hand out to families in the community.
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On Thursday afternoon, we sat down with our leadership staff to assess the situation and discuss our response. The major issues we are confronting include the destruction of the road, the loss of people's gardens and livestock, and those homes that have been severely damaged. (Praise God that even as we speak, they are working to fix the road! That was one of our most immediate, urgent needs.)
We are listening to our community to determine what they consider to be their greatest losses and priority needs. We want our response not only to help our community repair the damage and restore things to the way they were, but to move us a step FORWARD--to take measures that will prevent the exact same thing from being repeated all over again in the future. We are still developing the details.
Please pray for us as we work towards this in the days ahead. And thank you for standing with us!
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If you would like to help...
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