Audio Adrenaline's Children's Village in Haiti Hit Hard by Storms
The humanitarian project of Grammy-winning band Audio Adrenaline in Haiti was dealt some major setbacks over the past couple of weeks after being hit more than once by storms that swept through the area.
When the latest hurricane, Ike, hit Haiti this week, not even a week had passed since tropical storm Hanna severely damaged The Hands & Feet Project, a children's village in Jacmel, Haiti. The devastation left by Hanna relegated the children and staff, 48 people in all, to live in one second-story room.
"We are in need of much prayer and financial support right now," reported Drex Stuart, a lifetime missionary who has previously served in Haiti and heads up the Hands & Feet Project with his wife, Jo. "Thank God all of our children and staff are safe. However, we have had major damage to our property, even worse than when [tropical storm] Noel hit last November."
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Last month, the country was already struggling with Hurricane Fay's heavy rains when Gustav hit, followed by Hanna, and most recently Ike. According to Audio Adrenaline's non-profit group, Gustav buried the children's village in Jacmel in several feet of rocks, which came tumbling down the mountain during the storm.
"With our property completely buried in approximately four to five feet of mountain rock, we are doing the best we can to begin the clean-up process," reported Stuart, whose son is Audio Adrenaline frontman Mark Stuart.
According to the missionary, much of their supplies, food, clothes, diapers, formula, etc., have been destroyed and two of the houses where the kids lived were flooded with four feet of water and are currently unlivable.
"All 36 kids are living in the main house with the nannies," Stuart said in his report last Friday.
After Gustav hit Haiti, Mark Stuart and his father, who happened to be on a break in the United States, flew into Haiti with a civil engineer to assess the damage and come up with a plan to protect the village.
Following the assessment, the cleanup process began, but after four days of clearing rock and piling them up to make an earthen dam that would eventually be a 12-15 foot high concrete retaining wall with re-enforced steel for protection, tropical storm Hanna came through and washed all the progress away.
"Our property is about 50 feet wide, but we are also going to help our neighbors finish their walls, because otherwise ours will be ineffective," said Joel Griffith, Hands & Feet project managing director based in Franklin, Tenn. "In total we will build a 200-foot retaining wall covering a Christian school that has 850 kids, the homes and property of five neighboring families representing 50 people and our property housing 36 orphans and 12 staff."
Griffith said the organization is looking at an estimated immediate need of $100,000 - $150,000 to build the retaining wall and to purchase a backhoe to keep it up.
"Although at this time we cannot handle supplies because of shipping costs, we are asking for monetary donations through our website, www.handsandfeetproject.org," he said.
Following Ike is Hurricane Josephine, this Atlantic hurricane season's tenth named storm, which dissipated in force in the tropics but could strengthen again.
"Pray for Haiti," urged Mark Stuart in a press release. "[I]t's a country that is often overlooked by the news channels when hurricanes happen because there are really no tourist areas.
"[B]ut it's a place that really could use our help," he added.
Haiti's storm death toll - which government officials said stood at 312 people in four tropical storms in less than a month - is expected to rise as more bodies surface in the mud following Ike's landfall. The largest losses came from Hanna and Ike.
On the Web:
More information about this story, including photos, video storm footage, a video plea from Mark Stuart and more at handsandfeetproject.org.
