Earthquake in Haiti

Haiti was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on January 12, 2010. Its epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, approximately 25 km (16 miles) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

UUSC/UUA Joint Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund: $1,917,242.23 - 8/16/10

• Address the crisis in your congregational service

When Port-au-Prince, Haiti was rocked by a catastrophic earthquake on January 12, 2010, it affected close to 3.5 million people, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and causing untold suffering for those who survived. By now, nearly a month after the disaster, these consequences are well known.

Less familiar is that while the large-scale international aid response remained bottlenecked for weeks, local Haitian organizations and impromptu volunteer groups responded immediately, enacting compassionate concern for each other by digging through the rubble for survivors, finding food and water, building makeshift tent cities, and providing medical care.

Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation. Rife with radical inequality, its society systematically leaves out large numbers of people. For them, daily survival was a challenge even before the earthquake. Now life is indescribably more difficult. At the same time, as hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors stream out of the city in search of water, food, medicine, and shelter, the very structure of the Haitian countryside is changing. Many villages have doubled and tripled in size, and people are scrambling to feed and house everyone.

In the months and years to come, how Haiti rebuilds and recovers will bear the stamp of the global community's values and priorities. UUSC stands with those who are working to reverse the cycle of collapse and dependence that has plagued Haiti throughout its star-crossed history. We partner with Haitian organizations and social movements to ensure that their vision becomes reality.

Featured Stories About Our Response to the Earthquake