| CHURCH leaders across the Caribbean and south-eastern United States are this week assessing the needs of their communities, and coming to terms with the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Ike and Gustav. The storms have left an estimated one million people homeless in Haiti, and hundreds of thousands more in Cuba and the region around the Gulf of Mexico in the United States.
Hundreds have also been killed in the storms that struck the region earlier this month: 500 bodies were found in the Haitian city of Gonaives alone, after the floodwaters had receded.
The Bishop of Haiti, the Rt Revd Jean-Zaché Duracin, said that the Anglican Church there was preparing food aid for the survivors, but its relief effort was being hampered by the damage to communication systems. “Many people died, disappeared, or are hurt. The whole of Haiti has been affected — a country where the socio-economic situation was already bad. Many people have been left homeless, with no food and clothes.”
The Mission Aviation Fellowship has been distributing emergency aid in Haiti, and helping to evacuate those trapped by floodwaters.
In Cuba, it is estimated that 200,000 people have lost their homes, and crops have been severely damaged. The Revd Evelio Pérez, a priest in the Episcopal church in Esmeralda in Cuba, described the agricultural system as in a “state of collapse” after the storms. “We are without electricity . . . food, especially milk, is also becoming scarce. The price of gasoline has risen to about $76.75 per gallon, due to a combination of scarcity and a government-ordered increase.”
In the diocese of Western Louisiana in the United States, the Bishop, the Rt Revd Bruce MacPherson, described the storm surge in the Lake Charles and Sulphur area as “unbelievable”. His clergy had described it as “ten times worse” than Hurricane Rita in 2005. Clergy and parishioners have had their homes flooded by as much as four feet of water, he said.
The Bishop of Texas, the Rt Revd Don Wimberly, posted a message on the video-sharing website YouTube, reporting that most congregations on the mainland had suffered wind and water damage. He paid tribute to the aid distributed by the Episcopal Relief and Development group, describing it as “very humbling”.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, was one of 105 ecumenical and interfaith leaders to sign a statement calling for “a powerful response from people of faith” to help those whose homes had been battered by the storms.
More than a million people have been displaced internally from the Gulf Coast area. In their statement, the leaders say that “a spiritual wound remains open across the region; one felt in God’s creation and every community across this country”.
They criticised the inadequate flood-protection system and the accelerating erosion of the wetlands, which had left residents vulnerable to natural disasters.
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