Harrowing mercy mission to Haiti (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Harrowing mercy mission to Haiti

8:00am Sunday 21st March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

THE leader of the Salvation Army in Basingstoke has returned from a harrowing aid mission in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Captain Fred Eardley, who runs the Salvation Army church in Wessex Close with his wife Elaine, spent five weeks in the Caribbean country, where more than 230,000 people died after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday, January 12.

The 54-year-old had to cut short his time in Haiti to return to the UK on March 8 after his mother fell ill. She is now recovering after an operation.

On his return, he told The Gazette of the scale of the disaster.

He said: “The tsunami in 2004 in Asia destroyed swathes of coast but all the aid agencies did was to move the survivors inland.

“In Haiti there was nothing – the whole infrastructure was gone, especially the government and the police. It was complete devastation and it was unbelievable.”

Capt Eardley (pictured) spent almost all of his time in Haiti in Petit Goave – a coastal town 70km from the capital Port-au-Prince.

He helped set up a distribution point in the town, providing ration packs of food for around 10,000 families.

As well as the scarcity of food, the Haitians faced problems with disease through poor sanitation and the constant aftershocks that still reverberate around the country.

He said: “They have a terrible fear of going “under concrete” and they are talking about reverting to wooden huts.

“Every time there’s a tremor the Haitian people shout and scream and run for the open spaces. It’s pretty grim.”

Capt Eardley said many of his Salvation Army colleagues in Haiti had fallen ill with stomach bugs and been traumatised by what they saw.

He said: “I did not become traumatised – I went out there and did a job. But when I came back, I watched a programme about Haiti that my daughter had recorded and that really got to me.”

Capt Eardley took his first service back in Basingstoke on Sunday.