With at least 1,400 dead after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti early Saturday morning (Aug. 14), members of Boston’s Haitian community are feeling the reverberations, in addition to gang violence, the fallout from a presidential assassination and heavy rainfall that have hit the nation in the past year.

Many prominent Haitian expats have lept to mobilize relief efforts from abroad as they mourn the loss of friends and loved ones.
Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, will lend his private plane to support ongoing disaster relief efforts in Haiti, according to several people behind the efforts. Kraft’s offer of aid was arranged with help from the office of Gov. Charlie Baker.

“This is really about building a public and private partnership that will benefit the area and provide desperately needed relief,” said former state senator Linda Dorcena Forry, who is married to Reporter publisher Bill Forry.

The aircraft will deliver medical supplies to Saint Boniface Hospital in Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti with help from Massachusetts based organizations like Build Health International.

Haiti sits on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone, a hotbed of seismic activity in the Caribbean. In 2010 the area was struck by a devastating quake. Its epicenter just 30 miles west of the capital, Port-Au-Prince, exacerbated the death toll and a level of destruction the country was still struggling to repair 16 years later.

For a nation already enveloped in instability, said community activist Jean Claude Sanon, there is hope in the possibility of “mending what was lost.” “We have to make relief reach Haiti in a more structured way and make sure that we are quickly answering people’s needs,” he said. “They are desperate for drinking water, second is food, and, of course, they need shelter if they have been displaced.”

“The needs are not few,” added Sanon, who works in radio broadcasting and has previously run for City Council. “But we can mend the area if we learn from the lessons of 2010. I believe we will do it.”

In the aftermath of Saturday’s even more powerful earthquake, elected officials, concerned community members, and philanthropists are scrambling to act with immediacy to help contain and ameliorate the damage sustained on the island.

“People are crushed, it’s like Haiti can’t catch a break. The situation is horrible, it’s very sad, but we know the country is resilient,” said Forry, who is a member of the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network. “The Haitian community is mobilizing resources, but some things are still being rebuilt from 2010. There needs to be mobilization and there needs to be accountability.”

Julio Midy, who is a Boston Public Schools teacher, echoed laments about mishandling of resources in 2010 but remained optimistic about the latest relief efforts.

An alliance of more than 60 local Haitian-Americans have also joined with organizations including Haitian American United and Friends of Haiti to settle on an account to field and redistribute relief funds.

In the aftermath of the 2010 disaster, Boston philanthropists joined forces to create The Haiti Fund, which was housed through The Boston Foundation. The fund made grants to carefully selected non-profits with a mission to empower Haitian-led organizations closest to the need on the ground. After five years, the fund morphed into what is now the Haiti Development Institute, which continues to work closely with organizations that are located in the latest quake zone in the southwest region of Haiti.

Reporter executive editor/publisher Bill Forry contributed to this report.