Magnitude 7.1 Earthquake Stikes off Honduras May 28, 2009

There was a powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake at 2:24 a.m. Thursday morning (May 28) killing at least six people and wounding 40 more. These figures may change.

Southeast of San Pedro Sula, half of the 120-meter (130-yard) Democracy bridge in the town of El Progreso collapsed. This is a bridge over the Ulúa River, the most important river economically.

Maritza Varela, director of the El Progreso Hospital reported that at least 13 injured people were admitted early this morning, one an adult with a hip injury and two minors, one of five years and the other nine were sent to the Mario Catarino Rivas hospital due to severe multiple skull injuries. They are sisters and live in Cologne La Nacional.

Patients from the second floor were taken to area hospital's garage for several hours.


The wall of the court house in San Pedro Sula was damaged.




This is in the area of Santa Barbara, Honduras.

All pictures were from La Prensa on-line.

As more information is learned,
more will be posted here.

NY/HELP Trip - August 2009

The next NY/HELP mission trip to Honduras will be the first two weeks of August! Joining Dr Gordon Comstock will be Nancy Savoy of Buffalo, a women’s health nurse practitioner, and Eileen Brittain of Arcade, who will be our Spanish linguist. We will be having a medical clinic and hopefully survey new water systems.

The last room of the new middle school in near-by Mataderos should be completed by the time we arrive. NY/HELP has been working with people from the local communities to build this school, so that children from this mountainous area could continue their education past 6th grade, without having to go to the “county seat” of Yoro, some 20 miles (and 4 hours travel) away. This has been a big thing for the tribal communities here!

NY/HELP is still in need of donations to help equip the library at the school, as well as donations to provide medicines for the clinic and water projects and health improvements in the ten communities that make up this mountainous neighborhood.

There is still time to join the trip, which leaves August 2. If you are interested, or want more information, contact Gordon or Ginger Comstock at gkcomstock@gmail.com.

NY/HELP had a very successful follow-up meeting on Sunday, March 15. We talked about the accomplishments of the 14-member February mission trip. We also began to plan for the next trip in the summer of 2009 -- probably the end of July or the beginning of August. The highlights of the minutes will be posted on our website soon.












The students at the Mataderos school showed great talent as they painted a mural on the side of the school.

The February 2009 group came back on March 1 and will be having a wrap-up meeting on Sunday, March 15, at UCC Church in Arcade, to share accomplishments and plans for the future.


Here is a short statement from David Makepeace ahead of that meeting. More will be posted after the meeting.

"The excitement surrounding NY/HELP these days is palpable and this was also evident on the trip with everyone approaching their jobs with commitment and emotion. We are clearly making great progress in our goal of making the tribe self-sufficient in the three areas of our interest – education, sustainable productivity, and medicine.

I will let the individual group members report on specifics, but, in general, the trip was very productive. We set up the clinic in La Laguna with Dr. Gutiérrez, Dr. Susan Schwartz, “pharmacist mate” Steve Schwartz and medical student Jan Wong and, thanks to gynecological nurse practitioner Ilene Alt and Dr. Liz Zausmer, were able to set up a women’s clinic in Mataderos as well. Dr. Gutiérrez also set out on two occasions by mule to visit outlying villages servicing patients who could not make it to either of our clinics.


Our work projects were many including new roofs, entire homes, stoves and latrines. Dick DeNise, myself, Dana Wilson, Allison Brown and Zack Krause spread our efforts among five of the ten villages in the area with two separate overnight trips to El Paraiso and Agua Blanca respectively."

Hola amigos,

Thursday, February 26, we heard from Kelly Beers, reporting for the NY/HELP mission group. She says the trip went really really well. They accomplished a lot; all the doctors kept really busy and the time in Honduras was a success. The group is now taking a day of vacation before heading back to the states this weekend.

More will be reported after they return and we have a 'wrap-up" meeting.

Thanks for your prayers and support.

February 2009 NY/HELP Mission Trip

This morning (Monday, February 16, 2009) 14 volunteers left for Honduras for a two-week mission trip. They have an ambitious schedule they hope to work on while there. That includes: 1- working on the construction of the 5th (and last) class for the middle school, which will serve as laboratories and painting and packaging of management and library; 2- supporting construction of 4 roofs, 10 Lorena stoves, 6 latrines and 5 floors in four different communities; 3- The doctors may run a mobile clinic in one of two outlying communities while others in the group do other work in that community. There will also be the traditional soccer tournament in one of the communities.

New Mission Trip Coming up in February 2009

The next mission trip to Honduras will take place in February, 2009 -- from February 16 to the 28. At this point it is "over-subscribed" with 14 people currently signed up to go. We try to limit the trips to no more than 12 people so as not to overwhelm the villagers and the sleeping spaces.

There will be another trip in the summer of 2009 as well. If you are interested in learning more information or going on that trip, please contact the Comstocks at either gcomstock@cnyti.com or gkcomstock@gmail.com or David Makepeace at dmake@frontiernet.net