American colleges were struggling to extractâ??and, in some cases, even reachâ??students, and faculty and staff members studying and traveling in Haiti in the wake of a deadly earthquake there Tuesday, a task made more difficult by the extent of the devastation and by already poor infrastructure in the Caribbean nation.
Rob Howell, director of international academic programs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said five engineering students and an adviser working in a rural area about 70 miles north of Port-au-Prince were safe. The group, from Engineers Without Borders, were working on a hydroelectric power-generation facility in Bayonnais.