Many people in New Brunswick are anxiously watching events unfold in Haiti, including a Moncton woman whose sister arrived in the country with a team of missionaries Tuesday, just hours before the earthquake hit.

"It was pretty nerve-racking here last night, just waiting and hoping for a phone call," said Jessica Kennedy.

A call finally came in the wee hours of the morning Wednesday from someone her sister, Alexandra Kennedy, is staying with. There was just enough time to find out she was OK before the line went down, she said.

It was also a long night for Laetitia Amédée, a third-year student at the University of Moncton who is from the capital city Port-au-Prince, which has been left in ruins by the 7.0 magnitude quake.

She wasn't able to reach family or friends over the phone, but finally received some good news through Facebook.

"I know they're doing OK because I found people on the internet who talked to them, but I didn't talk to them directly," she said.

There are about 60 students from Haiti at the university, said Amédée. They are sharing any information they have and talking about how they can help friends and family back home, she said.

Cash donations are best, according to Bill Lawlor, of the Red Cross in New Brunswick. He said he knows people are anxious to help, but co-ordination is key.

"With the infrastructure being so poorly damaged, just trying to arrange the logistics of sending goods and personnel down there, particularly untrained personnel, it can really hamper the operation."

Lawlor will make a public appeal once he knows how much the Canadian Red Cross is expected to donate, he said.

N.B.-connected hospital survives

A hospital in Haiti with connections to the Wesleyan Church in Quispamsis, N.B., came through the earthquake relatively well, said spokesman Randy Chiasson.

The hospital, on the island of Lagonave, has three doctors and serves 125,000 people, said Chiasson, who has been in touch with officials there by email.

"The people are so afraid ... that people in the village where the hospital is, and even the patients and the family who visit the patients, they're sleeping outside," he said.

"They won't go into the building. No buildings have collapsed on this island of Lagonave, but people have been injured and they won't stay in the buildings right now."

The Kings Valley Wesleyan church recently sent a Grand Manan fishing boat to Haiti to serve the hospital.

Skipper Bob Colpitts and crew member Charles McNair delivered the boat and returned safely to New Brunswick last week.

An International Red Cross official has estimated that three million people in the impoverished country of nine million may have been affected by the quake.

A Fredericton-based doctor who does aid work in Haiti was still waiting to find out whether the clinic her organization runs survived the quake.

The clinic where Healing Hands for Haiti works is very close to where much of the damage was done, said Dr. Colleen O'Connell, who was last in Haiti in early November.

She received word that everyone survived at two of the orphanages they regularly work with, St. Joseph's Home for Boys and Wings of Hope Orphanage.

"We're planning in the next 24 to 36 hours whether we're going to try and send teams down. But in this situation, you want to co-ordinate with the major NGOs," she said.

"You don't want to get in anybody's way, but at the same time, we know from medicine and disaster relief and especially earthquakes, the first 24 to 72 hours are critical.

"Food, water, basic wound care — we know there's going to be a lot of head injuries, spinal cord injuries and major orthopedic trauma. And for those that survive in the first 72 hours, that's probably where someone like myself would have more of a role."

Wildane Cupidon, a nun from Haiti who is studying in Saint John, said the level of devastation is so widespread, it's difficult to see where relief efforts can begin.

She's relying on God for comfort, she said.

"I just keep the faith, think positive, think that they are OK. And if they are not OK, too, I just take it as the will of God because there is nothing that can be done," said Cupidon.

"What happened already happened. If something bad is supposed to happen, it already happened. There is no way I can fix that and I just pray they find a way to stay alive."