Haitians in Utah work phones

Editor's note: If you have information out of Haiti or know people with ties to the island country, please e-mail newstips@desnews.com.

The phone rings and rings, but no one is picking up. And thousands of miles away in Taylorsville, Hernandez and Alda Honore are becoming more desperate as they try to reach their moms and their siblings in Haiti.

Alda Honore's mother, a sister and six brothers live in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital city and the scene of much of the devastation from Tuesday's earthquake. They have phones, but she hasn't gotten through.

Does that mean the circuits are busy? The lines are down? There's no one left to answer? She simply doesn't know.

Her husband's mother lives nearby, and no one's answering at her house, either, Alda Honore said.

At 5:30 a.m. Wednesday, a very worried Farnel Pierre-Louis got a single hopeful phone call through from his Utah home to his sister living a few miles outside Port-au-Prince. She and her children are all alive, he was told. They think his mother's fine but can't find her in the chaos following the quake. And there are many relatives whose fate remains unknown, said his wife, Susan Gleason Pierre-Louis.

All day Wednesday, Farnel Pierre-Louis was working the phones, talking to Haitian friends across the United States to see what they know. By midafternoon, he alone had successfully reached a loved one in Haiti.

He met his wife, Utahn Susan Gleason, while she was living in Port-au-Prince and serving as program director for a rehabilitation clinic built in large part on the dreams, labor and fundraising of Utahns. Besides trying to reach family, they were scrambling to learn the fate of that Healing Hands for Haiti clinic, along with others from the Salt Lake-based organization.

Healing Hands owns and operates a six-acre compound in Haiti's capital that includes a rehabilitation clinic and more than a dozen apartments rented by people working for the United Nations and other relief organizations.

In his office at St. Mark's Hospital, Healing Hands founder Dr. Jeffrey Randle checked his phone for missed calls and text messages countless times Wednesday.

Randle, a rehabilitation specialist, said he reached the executive director, who had gone home for the day by the time the earthquake hit about 5 p.m. He is unharmed but has not yet been able to get back to assess damage.