Alberta missionaries await air evacuation

Helicopter needed to leave compound as unrest in Haiti makes roads unsafe

A 24-person group of southern Albertan missionaries are set to be emergency evacuated from a portion of Haiti amid intense civil unrest in the country.

The group, Haiti ARISE, was set to be evacuated Friday from their compound in Grand Goave, Haiti.

The move comes after the federal government issued a new advisory for the Caribbean country, saying Canadians should avoid all travel there as they work to get out citizens trapped there.

“We are arranging to be airlifted out by helicopter today to the Port-au-Prince Airport,” said Haiti ARISE founder Marc Honorat in a statement.

“The situation in the country is escalating after the president addressed the nation last night. The opposition are still fighting and blocking roads. There’s no way to get out by road. Please pray for safe passage!”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa Friday the government is deeply concerned about what’s going on in Haiti.

“Many Canadians have family members and friends in Haiti that they are of course worried about, and our hearts go out to them,” Trudeau said.

Haiti ARISE spokesperson Tammy Love said the group will be arriving in Calgary “over the next few days.”

Grand Goave, where the group is located, is a commune located 65 kilometres west of the Haiti capital Port-au-Prince.

In a video shared to the Haiti ARISE Facebook page Friday afternoon, Honorat said they have been trapped at their compound for over a week.

“We have nowhere to go — roads are blocked, there’s rioting all over the streets and businesses are being destroyed,” he said.

“We do have a team here that we’ve been trying to get out, but it’s been totally impossible.”

His wife said in the video, there are many other Canadians stuck in the country.

“There’s many other expats, and missionaries and foreigners in the country stuck. We’ve heard of some as far away as 200 miles away that cannot get to the city to get to the airport,” she said.

“It’s dangerous because everything is blocked — the country is shut down. We cannot go out to purchase fuel, diesel or food. People are living off what they have as reserves and most Haitians don’t have reserves — they live day to day.”

Global Affairs said it upgraded its advisory for Haiti late Thursday due to ongoing civil unrest throughout the country.

The notice warns that the “security situation could further deteriorate quickly” and that people should “consider leaving by commercial means while they are available.”

More than 100 Canadians have been unable to leave Haiti since protesters blocked major highways across the country in an effort to pressure President Jovenel Moise to resign.

Protesters are angry over skyrocketing inflation and the government’s failure to prosecute embezzlement from a multibillion-dollar Venezuelan program that sent discounted oil to Haiti.

“We’re also obviously preoccupied with a number of Canadians who are in Haiti right now who are looking to come home to Canada in this crisis situation,” Trudeau said. “We are working with them, Global Affairs Canada and all our diplomatic corps is very much engaged in this.”

An Ottawa physician who navigated the dangerous roads of Haiti Friday to get to the Port-au-Prince airport with three Canadian colleagues says he feel lucky to be alive and is warning others stranded in the strife-torn country not to follow his lead.

“Please do not do (what I did), because you can get killed,” Dr. Emilio Bazile told The Canadian Press from the airport after a harrowing seven-and-a-half hour journey that ended with his group hiring an ambulance driver to secure safe passage.

They drove into a lawless nightmare upon leaving Aquin, about 115 km west of Port-au-Prince. They ran into numerous roadblocks and had to detour onto secondary roads.

“You have to pay every time you pass somewhere. You have to pay somebody $500, sometimes they ask $1,000 to allow you to pass.”