Help Haiti Now PDF Print E-mail

More than 400 Red Cross workers from around the world are now in Haiti organizing a massive relief effort. The American Red Cross is performing first aid, delivering water and tending to the immediate needs of the people in Haiti.

The Red Cross has set up a field hospital in Jacmel, which can treat approximately 200 people per day and first aid stations are being set up in the streets where Red Cross workers and volunteers from Haiti and other countries are working side-by-side to clean and stitch up wounds amidst the rubble.

Special Red Cross teams trained in search and rescue were able to save 40 people from a collapsed supermarket, including a small child, after 26 hours continuous efforts.

Over the weekend, three planes carrying Red Cross humanitarian assistance were expected in the region, delivering a field hospital and needed materials such as tarps, blankets, hygiene items, buckets, shelter supplies and kitchen sets. Another shipment of supplies for 20,000 families should arrive Monday on a cargo plane provided in partnership with FedEx. 

In the days ahead, the Red Cross will begin to provide temporary shelters in Haiti. Kits, containing tarps, rope and tools, as well as tents and blankets, will be made available for an initial 20,000 families. 
American Red Cross President and CEO Gail McGovern is in the Dominican Republic, meeting with Red Cross leadership from around the world, and will travel to Haiti on Tuesday to visit relief operations. 

Also, The Red Cross is training 40-100 Creole-speaking volunteers who will work as translators on the USNS Comfort when Haitians will be brought aboard for medical care.

Phone banks are open at our American Red Cross locations in South Florida (305-644-1200 or 954-797-3800) to answer the high volume of calls we are receiving. We are currently providing information on how to make donations and how to become American Red Cross volunteers. At this point, the American Red Cross South Florida Region is not sending volunteers to Haiti because of the many challenges that we are facing there.

The most effective and most direct way to provide direct assistance to people affected bythis earthquake is to make a donation to the American Red Cross International Response Fund. Money raised for Haiti will be used to purchase the essential supplies such as food and water that are desperately needed by the survivors during first few days after the earthquake.

Donations can be sent to the American Red Cross P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013 or made by phone by calling 1-800-REDCROSS or online by clicking here.

If you prefer to make a $10 donation by text message, send the word "HAITI" to 90999.