Community Corner

Pastor's Providential Escape from Haiti

A Bedford pastor was in Haiti merely 24 hours before the quake struck.

Merely 24 hours after Rev. Dan Haugh boarded a flight out of Port-au-Prince to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the Caribbean nation was rocked by the worst earthquake in 200 years. 

"We flew out of there on Jan. 11, at 5:00 p.m. and the next day, around that time, the quake struck," said Haugh, pastor of student ministries at the Bedford Community Church.  

Some may call that a providential escape and thank their fate for having been spared untold horror. But Haugh looks at the incident from an altogether different angle, through a prism of deep compassion.

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"While we were all glad to have escaped, part of us wished we were there when it happened so we could help the victims," he said. 

He believes it was a divine design. "God allowed us to leave and return home safe so that we could raise awareness and support and use the incredible resources we have here in Westchester to help the victims in Haiti.  As we often say in our church, 'We have been blessed so that we can bless others,' he said.  

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On the morning of his departure from the there, Haugh and his team on the ground in Haiti were brainstorming ideas to raise funds to build more orphanages in the area by the end of 2010.  

At the time, they had in mind a group of 100-odd kids. 

Then, within the next several hours, the landscape changed dramatically—literally so. On Jan. 12, the ground shook fiercely, with a magnitude-7.0 temblor. Buildings fell like walls of pancakes. Roads cracked open. Over 100,000 lost their lives and more than 600,000 were left homeless. Countless were rendered orphans. 

In the aftermath of the calamity that touched the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, their attention shifted from the orphans to the community at large.

On Jan. 14, Haugh and Rev. David Stradling, a colleague at the Hillside Church in Armonk, air dashed to Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, as volunteers for Air Calvary—a Mount Kisco-based non-profit that provides air relief efforts to areas afflicted by humanitarian and public health crises or natural disasters. 

With the rest of the Air Calvary team, they set up an office at La Isabela International Airport in Santo Domingo. For the next six days, until Jan. 20, they coordinated an arduous mission of flying people in and out of neighboring Port-au-Prince in partnership with the Dominican Republic's only helicopter company, Helidosa.

"We were fielding requests for drop-offs and pick-ups for folks who had no other means of getting to the makeshift clinics in Haiti," said Haugh.

"Rev. Haugh did a terrific job. He went there at his own cost and his own risk," said Brock Barrett, president of Air Calvary, speaking of Haugh's gallant volunteer efforts in Haiti.


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