ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
In Haitian communities far from Haiti, efforts to help are under way. Marianne McCune of member station WNYC has the story of two brothers in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush, who are set on returning to Haiti. McCune spent the day with them as they collected supplies.
Mr. JOSEPH PIERRE CADET: Okay, my name is Joseph-Pierre Cadet. Nickname: Haitien.
MARIANNE McCUNE: That's the French pronunciation of Haitian.
Mr. CADET: Since I was a little boy, everybody in my neighborhood in Haiti, they saw how much that I love my country so they give me that nickname Haitien.
McCUNE: Joseph-Pierre Cadet says even as a boy, he used to bring food to his neighbors' houses. He hasn't lived there since he was 14, and he's 40 now. But three years ago, he and a friend created a school and youth center in his old neighborhood. Now he wants to get back to Haiti to help the students and to find his mother whom he hasn't heard from yet.
(Soundbite of a vehicle)
Mr. CADET: Me and my brother and my friend, we're planning to travel by Monday.
McCUNE: The problem is there are no flights available. So while they wait, they're using their white construction van to drive around Brooklyn and pick up supplies to either send with an aid agency or carry themselves to Haiti.
Mr. CADET: We cannot depend all the time on people, on outsiders. What about us? Nobody going to change it for you; you have to change it.
McCUNE: They stop in a neighborhood full of wholesale supply stores to buy bottled water. They load eight cases of water into the van, next to cartons of Cup-o-Soups and juice boxes and bags of rice. And they head back to a friend's office where they'll store the stuff. When they get there, Cadet's friend Jean-Claude Denis is waiting downstairs in the wire transfer agency. And he's rattled. He says the last two people who came in to wire money each learned today they lost three family members.
Mr. JEAN-CLAUDE DENIS: That's crazy. And in some places, it's so devastated they can't even use them. They couldn't even wire money to those places yet, because nothing is functioning.
McCUNE: Outside by the van, these four ask all the Haitians who walk by how they're faring. A woman stops to write down the name of a Red Cross Web site Denis has heard about, where people can list missing family members.
Unidentified Woman: I-E-R-P.
Mr. DENIS: E-R-P, that's all.
McCUNE: Denis receives a phone call himself from his niece in Boston, with good news about some cousins.
Mr. DENIS: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCUNE: And then he spots a commotion across the street.
(Soundbite of weeping)
McCUNE: Three passers-by are trying to console a woman who has just received a call. She says her sister and her sister's three children are dead.
(Soundbite of weeping)
McCUNE: A Jamaican immigrant named Diane Joshua calls the woman's work to tell them she won't be in. But she only has the woman's first name.
Ms. DIANE JOSHUA: If you don't see someone come in today, you'll know that person - that's the person I'm talking about. It's horrible. You understand? So I just come to comfort her. It's sad. It's really, really sad.
McCUNE: The day is full of ups and downs. By phone, late in the evening, Joseph-Pierre Cadet says he did reach his mother.
Mr. CADET: When I spoke to her, the first thing she said, son, I'm alive. I'm okay. I said, Mommy, I'm glad that you're okay.
McCUNE: Now he just has to get down there to see her.
For NPR News, I'm Marianne McCune in New York.