Local aid workers still working on travel plans to and from earthquake-stricken Haiti

A group of Fargo-Moorhead area doctors and nurses who are in Haiti on a medical mission are safe after a major earthquake rocked the impoverished nation Tuesday.

The medical group has been going to Haiti for a dozen years to perform cleft-pallet surgery and other medical procedures in the Haitian community of Pignon.

Another group of volunteers from Trinity lutheran in Moorhead is there as well helping repair a school in Pignon.

WDAY TV’s Kevin Wallevand has been a part of that team of medical volunteers for 12 years. This morning, he’s in Florida and trying to get to Haiti.

The flight he was supposed to take was cancelled but the reporter is trying to line up a flight on a cargo plane.

Wallevand said the search and rescue efforts in Port Au Prince will be difficult because of the way everything is built there.

Most of the buildings were poorly constructed, Wallevand says.

As for the Medical and humanitarian groups from here in Pignon, Wallevand says they are to return to the U.S. later this week.

However, given the damage, Wallevand said it’s hard to say if they’ll get out when they are supposed to.

The International Federation of the Red Cross estimates up to 3 million people have been affected by the quake.

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