Gov. Ed Rendell touched down in hellish Port-au-Prince last night on a mission to save 61 starving orphans in the care of two Pittsburgh natives, his office said.
Friends of sisters Jamie and Ali McMutrie, who have lived in Haiti running the BRESMA orphanage since 2006, first began petitioning politicians and a Pittsburgh hospital for help over the weekend. The children, many who are only weeks away from adoption by American couples, are without safe drinking water and food, the McMutrie sisters told their friends through text messages.
Rendell hoped to pick the children up at the airport in Port-au-Prince late last night and then return to Pittsburgh Airport by about midnight. The sisters were expected to remain behind.
“That’s the plans. But they don’t know what they’re going to find when they land,” Rendell’s spokesman Gary Tuma said at 5 p.m., shortly after Rendell told him they were departing Miami International Airport.
