Dear Friends,

Jacmel was hit very hard by the massive earthquake. Miraculously our Cine Institute team and students seem to all be alive. The town lost many many buildings and presumably many more lives. In an urgent email from our school director, Andrew Bigosinski said, “There is no local rescue plan or capacity. No emergency food, water, blankets or medicine. The Hospital St. Michel collapsed. I joined 3000 others to sleep at the airstrip last night. You could hear the howling of people crying in town. Nightmarish. I never could have expected the ferocity of this quake.”

Our own infrastructure at the Institute is badly damaged.
We are gearing up to work on three fronts:
get news out about Jacmel so help arrives there too
help family abroad confirm status of their family in Jacmel
Acquire and distribute medical care, medicine, food and water to the town and surrounding areas.
Internet is barely working so please be patient.

If you have family in Jacmel send names and their details to
info@cineinstitute.com
and we will attempt to get news of them for you.

Port-au-prince appears to be nearly flattened and dominating the current coverage. It appears that there is no substantial infrastructure remaining to launch search and recovery and treat wounded.

The national palace, the UN HQs, the General Hospital, Medicins sans Frontier are all leveled. We are still trying to figure out just who is left that can be effective. So much now depends on how quickly the US, UN and others can get in there and how effectively they can coordinate efforts.

Thank you for your support,

David Belle
Ciné Institute

SUPPORT THE RECOVERY EFFORT
IN EARTHQUAKE DEVASTATED JACMEL.