None — One week ago, Eyewitness News anchor Vince Coakley left Charlotte for Haiti. The following is his account of the devastation left by last month's earthquake:
I really didn't know what to expect when Pastor Jean Telfort and Greg Hardee from Steele Creek Church asked me to join them.
They went to assess the needs of the Haitian people so members of Charlotte's Haitian community and others can help with the short- and long-term recovery and rebuilding effort.
I did see first-hand all of the destruction you've seen on television, but I saw something more -- a resilient people determined to see a new Haiti rise out of the rubble.
In Fort Pierce, Fla., we met up with Farrell Burton of Harrisburg. Burton and another couple run an orphanage several hours outside Port-au-Prince. But on this trip, he has literally thousands of medical supplies to deliver.
"We got syringes, masks, IVs, angio-casts, a lot of medical supplies. We'll take it to hospitals and help some people out," Burton said.
When we got on the ground in Port-au-Prince, it felt like a war zone. It didn't take long to see a United Nations convoy on one of the main roads.
Soon after, we started to see it -- homes and businesses in various states of collapse. For some people, all that's left of their homes is broken-up concrete in a pile. But in a strange way, you can see people attempting to go about their lives like usual.
There are some images that will stay with me: the collapsed presidential palace, the terribly understaffed hospitals with crying patients -- many of them have lost limbs -- the food lines and children sleeping under a tent at the public plaza. There were also singing children at orphanages and a high level of security in and around Port-au-Prince.
Even the place we stayed had a guard armed with a shotgun.
Probably most disturbing to us was the story we repeatedly heard: that people are not getting the aid they need. One pastor said many people are going three days without food despite all the organizations collecting food and money.
We did connect that pastor and others with a missionary group that has plenty of food, water and other supplies. They were scheduled to meet Tuesday to get some of the aid to pass on to their people. We hope to confirm that Tuesday or Wednesday.
The big issue here is trust. Some agencies and churches don't trust each other. There's tension between governments, Haitian and American, and we found little confidence in the United Nations.
To hear more about Vince's trip, click here.