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GREENSBORO — Shannon Rogers got the call Tuesday night while teaching a class at the Salvation Army of Greensboro.

A major earthquake had struck near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti — the country she had just left on Saturday after a weeklong mission trip. Photos and updates soon followed from survivors in Haiti through Facebook and Twitter.

“My heart felt like it had been ripped out of my body,” said Rogers, 22. She has a photo of herself outside the Salvation Army compound in the capital and another sent to her showing the same building now in ruins.

The death toll continued to climb Wednesday as rescuers sifted through rubble. It was unclear how many Triad residents might be in Haiti. Some local churches send missionary groups there to help the impoverished country, which occupies the western one third of an island southeast of Cuba in the Caribbean.

No groups from Holy Trinity Episcopal Church were in Haiti at the time, said the Rev. Virginia Herring, assistant to the rector for the church.

For the past several years, mission groups from the church have helped build a school in Fondwa and a clinic at Leogane, both west of the capital. Holy Trinity has yet to hear from either site, Herring said Wednesday.

“It’s really frightening to think about,” she said.

The American Red Cross has established a Web site to help connect families looking for loved ones in Haiti. The agency has sent someone to Haiti to gather information for its Family Links site, said Bill Brent, executive director of the Greater Greensboro Region. Family Links allows people to register the names of loved ones they are seeking in a disaster situation. If those members connect with the Red Cross in Haiti, their safety can be confirmed on the site, Brent said.

Social media has helped people affected in Haiti keep in touch with the Triad since almost immediately after the earthquake.

The Rev. Marc Boisvert posted on his blog at 6:04 p.m. Tuesday: “Lots of shaking and questioning, enthralled kids but, thankfully, no one hurt and no structures damaged.”

Boisvert heads a program called Pwoje Espwa (“Project Hope” in Creole) just outside Les Cayes, a city west of the capital. The group houses 600 children there and operates two schools and a medical facility.

Boisvert’s brother-in-law, Jack Reynolds , helps run the nonprofit from Greensboro. They have been in touch by e-mail as well as through updates to Boisvert’s blog, Reynolds said.

While no one was hurt there, concern quickly has shifted to how supplies will get to places such as Pwoje Espwa, Reynolds said.

“We immediately started rationing,” he said.

The country is extremely poor and struggled before the earthquake, said Rogers of the Salvation Army .

“Our level of poverty is nothing compared to theirs,” she said. “People are living on $2 a day. What we spend on a Frappuccino from Starbucks could feed their family.”

That poverty will make not only surviving the earthquake difficult, but also rebuilding.

Disaster relief officials and others suggest that any support at this stage to be monetary.

“People are calling up, 'Do you need blankets?’” Reynolds said. “We need money. And it will go directly to acquire what they need.”

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com