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The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti Jan. 12 has been called one of the largest natural disasters in recent history. As the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere with 80 percent of its population under the poverty line, international aid -- with a major role played by Israeli medical teams and local Jewish groups -- was not only immediately offered, but became a lifeline for the estimated 3 million Haitians affected by the earthquake.

"Given the scope of the disaster, all forms of logistics are required -- this is not just an air operation; this can be a land, sea, and air operation," Stephanie Bunker, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Jewish State in a phone interview Jan. 18. "Things are coming through the Dominican Republic and the trip from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince is taking 18 hours."

Bunker explained that the relief effort is threefold: search and rescue efforts, medical supplies and personnel, and humanitarian aid -- specifically for food, drinking water, and shelter. The days gone by since the quake can be a lifetime for those with severe injuries, or worse, still trapped in the rubble, but the relief effort trudges on as quickly as possible.

Bunker said that the most important and pressing parts of the relief effort were for search and rescue teams to help free those trapped by the rubble.

"It's still ongoing, because it's a situation where the weather is holding up very well and by the way the buildings fell, people were trapped other than outright killed," Bunker said. "The president of Haiti said that the search and rescue phase will continue until they decide that they will not continue."

Eric Falt, outreach director for the U.N., agreed with Bunker that search and rescue efforts will continue until Haitian President Rene Preval says otherwise. Since the earthquake, 90 lives have been saved by 46 search and rescue teams from around the world.

"Every life is worth [saving], and there were two more lives rescued only (on Monday)," Falt told The Jewish State. "This is something astonishing, that a lot of people are holding out some hopes of finding some survivors."

IDF search and rescue

An Israeli search and rescue team joined forces with teams from several other countries to help dig survivors out of the rubble, according to Yoel Lion, spokesperson for media affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in New York. However, the Israeli team ended their efforts Tuesday evening, with no leads to living people trapped in the rubble left.

"The rescue teams went straight down to find people," Lion told The Jewish State in a phone interview Jan. 19. "They were able to take somebody out on Shabbat, a guy who worked at the tax and customs ministry, and he was texting all the time, so they managed to find him. Today, the search and rescue will end because they don't think anyone else is alive under the rubble."

The search and rescue team was only a small component of Israel's relief effort: after the Israeli ambassador to the neighboring Dominican Republic saw how terrible the situation was on the ground, 220 people, 120 of them medical professionals, were sent to Haiti to set up the largest, highest functioning field hospital in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The field hospital is the size of a football field, has 500 beds, X-ray equipment, a pharmacy, a full operation room, and an advanced maternity ward with a much-needed incubator.

One woman was so thankful that she named her baby "Yishai Yisrael," after the homeland of the doctors who saved her baby.

"We are almost the only one to have brought maternity help, and we were the only ones to bring an incubator," Lion said. "In the incubator, we had a premature baby -- on Saturday night there were three births, one of which was a 1.8-kilo (4-pound) premature baby, and we managed to save him. It's a great thing what they are doing there; they are working all the time."

Two additional volunteer groups, Jerusalem-based search and recovery group Zaka International and NGO volunteer group IsraAID, came with the Israeli delegation to assist with medical care. Zaka, the organization known for collecting body parts after terrorist attacks, rescued eight people from the rubble. IsraAID came with 15 volunteers who deal with hundreds of injured per day; on one particular day, Lion noted that IsraAID alone treated 2,000 injured Haitians.

Lion said that the Israeli delegation originally planned to stay for two weeks, but as the relief efforts progress, that figure may change.

N.J. Jewish groups step in

Medical help went to Haiti from nearby Perth Amboy as well: Dr. Alan Goldsmith, president of the Jewish Renaissance Medical Center, plans to leave for Haiti in the upcoming days with his medical team and several other volunteers to set up a field hospital for the wounded, as well as to bring palates of food and water for the injured, according to Jennifer Crutchfield, director of marketing and communications at the hospital. She explained that Goldsmith is trying to create a "tented city" for the displaced Haitians, a series of tents that would give them a place to sleep, a kitchen to cook in, and a hospital to seek treatment in.

"He is working with the General Consul of New York, and the Haitian mission (to the U.N.)," Crutchfield told The Jewish State Jan. 18. "Dr. Goldsmith is taking a lot of physicians, with his medical team in place -- he is bringing people from Florida, Italy, and his own staff."

Goldsmith, who also serves as a goodwill ambassador to the U.N., will take several weeks to set up a fully functioning field hospital with his team.

Crutchfield added that Goldsmith is working closely with "someone in government" to secure temporary visas for Haitian orphans, so they can seek treatment and then hopefully be adopted by Americans.

"We are working closely with a key person in the government to bring them," Crutchfield said, although she could not identify which official was providing assistance. "We're working it out as we speak."

Humanitarian aid, Bunker said, will become the lengthiest and most challenging part of the relief efforts as sea ports, airports, and roads remain damaged. With the crippling loss of the U.N. mission in Haiti -- at least 46 deaths by press time, the largest single loss in U.N. history -- coordination between the different aid groups is slow, but forthcoming.

"The U.N. is trying to identify who is lost and confirm who's lost -- there are hundreds of staff who remained unaccounted for," Bunker said. "At the same time, the ones accounted for are working and [the U.N.] sent an additional staff to help compensate."

"It is the worst disaster in the history of the U.N.," Falt said. "I spent five years in Haiti and it's heartbreaking to see what's happening there and to see colleagues confirmed dead."

The Jewish philosophy of repairing the world has not stopped despite the U.N.'s setbacks. Area federations are collecting funds -- cash that's desperately needed, according to Falt -- and then giving them to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, who will then give them to the appropriate agencies in Haiti.

"We're helping to facilitate the fundraising efforts through the Joint Distribution Committee," said Harold Gases, executive director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Monmouth County. "We are asking for donations, and 100 percent of all collected is going to the JDC. Within minutes, we were receiving people's contributions. We're getting every day, in excess of $5,000 so far.... Federations in the area, including the entire country, are urging their constituencies to contribute."

Steven Schwager, the executive vice president and CEO of the JDC, called the federations' fundraising their "primary source" of funds from Jewish donors, money that will go to humanitarian aid when the JDC sets up a delegation in Haiti, in approximately two weeks.

"Federations are our primary source of Jewish money," Schwager told The Jewish State in a phone interview Jan. 18. "As a result, whenever there's a disaster like this, we ask them to raise money. Given the news covering and devastation and traditional Jewish concern for the world, I expect that this will raise significant amounts of money."

Schwager said that since their initiative launched on Jan. 14, the JDC on its own raised $1.5 million and that number continues to grow as federations around the country raise the necessary funds. Although some of the funds are being used for initial response like medical care, Schwager said that the JDC is looking to fund longer-term projects, like rebuilding schools and houses.

"Usually, there's a rush of first responders, and there isn't a large follow up in terms of infrastructure," Schwager said. "We tend to stay longer and do infrastructure programs to help people get back to their lives. We have a number of partner agencies on the ground. In Haiti, there are three Jewish families, so there's not a functioning Jewish community. Normally, we would partner with the local Jewish community. Since there is none, we are using our connections -- we had someone who used to work for the JDC who works for an NGO there [who is] opening a soup kitchen for us. Right now, we are working through several NGOs on the ground, [like the] field hospital of the IDF, Partners in Health, and Heart to Heart International.

"It's not clear yet, given that the situation on the ground is so chaotic and there's no government to work with or infrastructure, so it depends upon when the Haitian people are ready for us to move from phase one to phase two."

Humanitarian assistance

Coupled with humanitarian aid is the need for security. Falt and Bunker agreed that security is not a pressing issue, but a U.N. peacekeeping mission of 9,000, with 3,000 of those in Port-au-Prince, is responsible for keeping order.

"The U.N. stabilizing mission is providing street patrols and providing security for humanitarians as they go on distributions," Bunker said. "The impression people are getting is that the situation is extremely insecure, but that is not what the secretary-general saw. There is insecurity and some violence, but it's sporadic... there are some reports of looting, but again, when a disaster strikes like this on any population, people are traumatized, angry, and upset, and they are frustrated."

"We have seen isolated incidents of looting, but we don't agree with the perception by the media that rampant looting is everywhere," Falt said. "We all know that one isolated incident captured by camera can give the notion that this is a situation all over the country, [but] that is not the case."

Falt pressed that the most urgent need in Haiti is cash. The U.N. estimated that a minimum of $560 million is needed for the rehabilitation and rebuilding efforts.

"There's an outpouring of assistance and manifestation of sympathy for Haiti, but very little translates into hard cash," Falt said. "We have a lot of bottlenecks, but we were trying to do a little bit better every day."