Nearly a week has passed since the Haiti 7.0 earthquake on Tuesday 12th January 2010 at 04:53:09. Although aid and help are now arriving on the scene it is chaos amongst the devastation and the Haitians are desperate for food, water, medical treatment and shelter.

Local help has been sent from two different Canary Islands:

Cruz Roja España has been able to send aid from their new logistics centre in Las Palmas which was inaugurated in September 2009 and holds emergency supplies such as blankets, tents, water purification tablets. The package for Haiti which is being dispatched via airplane from the military base Aérea de Gando today also includes a water treatment plant, two all terrain vehicles and a huge base tent.

Lanzarote has a flotilla of 24 boats leaving from Playa Blanca today to sail across the Atlantic to Haiti. The island’s Rotary club together with Cámara (chamber of commerce), Marina Rubicón and local businesses / residents have donated medicine kits, light sheets or blankets, candles and lanterns, small generator sets, first-aid kits and rescue materials.

In the States the owners of the LGBT cruise ships Atlantis, Olivia and RSVP have joined forces with the gay community to raise disaster relief funds. Rich Campbell the CEO of Atlantis events explained that their cruise departed from Miami yesterday with a scheduled stop on the northern coast of Haiti he said  "our guests have been watching with horror and concern as the painful images of suffering in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince come spilling forth on our televisions."  Claire Lucas worked with the American Red Cross to set up a dedicated donation site http://american.redcross.org/LGBT-pub. American Red Cross Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Floyd W. Pitts stated "We are thrilled with this partnership with the LGBT community and we are delighted to be working with organizations which take such a strong interest in humanitarian response". Rich Cambell emphasized  that "now is the time for us to lend our gay dollars to a compelling human tragedy that knows no gender or sexual orientation,"  Atlantis & RSVP have pledged  $15,000 in matching contributions and Olivia has pledged an additional $7,500 raising a total of $22,500 towards the fund.