By Nicole Wallace

Aid organizations that were working in Haiti before Tuesday's devastating earthquake are working to provide aid to survivors even as they try to locate their own employees and assess damage to their facilities.

"We're trying to evaluate and get the materials in," says Michael Zamba, a spokesman for the Pan American Development Foundation. "But we're also trying to figure out if our employees are accounted for and how their families are doing."

So far, the organization has been able to account for only about half of its staff members in Haiti.

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders has already provided medical care to more than 1,000 people in makeshift treatment centers, but reports that those centers have been overwhelmed.

The organization's three hospitals in Port-au-Prince - which include a trauma center and a maternity hospital - all sustained heavy damage, and patients had to be evacuated onto grounds adjacent to the buildings.

Médecins Sans Frontières has not been able to confirm the whereabouts of all its 800 employees. The group plans to send 80 additional staff members to reinforce its efforts to provide emergency care.

An inflatable field hospital, which is equipped with two operating theaters, is expected to arrive in the next 24 hours.

The organization has seven charter flights stocked with staff members and supplies, but so far only one has been able to fly into Haiti. That flight carried 25 tons of relief material - tents, medical disaster kits, blankets, plastic sheeting, fuel containers, and hygiene and cooking sets - from a warehouse in Panama.

"Basic provisions were always problematic for people in Port-au-Prince but the position is far worse now," Vincent Hoedt, one of the organization's emergency coordinators, said in an article on the group's Web site. "And obviously there's a concern for people who are already weakened by injuries. There are also shortages of things like gasoline, which affects the working of all kinds of vital equipment."

Improvised Facilities

The main hospitals and surgical facilities of Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that has provided medical care in Haiti since 1985, are located in Cange, roughly two hours outside Haiti's capital. They experienced a strong shock during the earthquake, but there was no major damage or injuries.

Late Wednesday night, the organization was able to get a truck filled with supplies from Hinge to Port-au-Prince. Earlier in the day the charity had begun organizing the logistics to set up field hospital sites in Port-au-Prince to triage patients, provide emergency care, and act as bases from which they can send people who need surgery or more complex treatment to Cange.

On Tuesday night, Louise Ivers, clinical director in Haiti for Partners in Health, sent an urgent appeal for assistance to her colleagues.

"Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths," she wrote. "SOS. SOS... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us."

All 14 employees of the Catholic Medical Mission Board in Haiti, which began working in the country in 1912, are safe, but many have lost friends and family members. The group's building sustained structural damage, but its country director was able to retrieve some documents from the office.

Catholic Relief Services has been working in Haiti for 55 years, and has 313 staff members in the country, most of whom have been accounted for.

None of the charity's 10 expatriate international employees were injured, but there were injuries among the group's 303 Haitian staff members. One woman was trapped in a building with her two sons for several hours until all three were rescued.

‘Traumatized' Workers

Catholic Relief Services is concerned about the emotional wellbeing of its employees after the disaster, says John Rivera, a spokesman for the organization.

"Everyone's obviously traumatized," he says.

Staff members in Port-au-Prince have been working and sleeping in the courtyard of its building, because the group fears the office sustained structural damage during the quake.

Prior to the earthquake, Catholic Relief Services had stored supplies, such as tarps, bedding, cooking items, and hygiene kits, for about 1,000 families in a warehouses in Haiti. Supplies for an additional 500 families were stored in Santo Domingo, the capital of the neighboring Dominican Republic

The organization is sending a bus of emergency specialists to Port-au-Prince today from the staging area it has organized in Santo Domingo. The bus will then evacuate employees' family members out of the city.

In Santo Domingo, the charity is preparing 10,000 boxes of food that will feed a family of five, which will also be trucked into Haiti. The group hopes to have 100 of those boxes in Port-au-Prince by Friday.

The roads to Haiti from the Dominican Republic seem to be relatively clear, says Mr. Rivera.

But he says, "even in the best of times, traveling in Haiti is difficult."

Caroline Preston contributed to this article.