TORONTO — When Audree Montpetit flew home to Montreal from Haiti just three months ago, she was overcome with relief that the impoverished island nation had come through the 2009 hurricane season unscathed.

On Wednesday, the Care Canada aid worker was packing her bags again, preparing to return to a country brought to its knees by a earthquake the likes of which hasn't been seen in the region for more than two centuries.

Montpetit, who is heading back to the devastated capital of Port-Au-Prince, said she's fearful for friends and former colleagues who may be among the untold numbers of dead or those who find themselves searching for food, clean water and shelter.

"To be honest, I'm a little bit afraid to go back to that city I knew so well and to see it in a totally different light," she said in a telephone interview.

"There's going to be people that are still trapped in buildings, and . . . dead people. That's going to be challenging."

The devastation of Tuesday's quake was a particularly cruel blow for a country that was ravaged by two hurricanes in late 2008 -- disasters from which people were still struggling to recover.

Groups like Care Canada, Unicef and the Salvation Army were among a chorus of aid organizations urging Canadians to open their hearts and their pocketbooks and make a contribution.

Salvation Army spokesman Andrew Burditt said anyone seeking to help should contribute cash rather than blankets, food or other goods, since they often pose logistical challenges and might never reach Haiti anyway, due to poor road conditions.

"Cash is fluid," Burditt said. "It allows us to use it in whatever manner is best needed."

Aid organizations will have a herculean task before them once they get into the country, which currently has no airport access, said Montpetit. Workers will try to rescue survivors, move victims into temporary shelters, distribute food and clean water and provide sanitation in an area where much of the infrastructure has been destroyed.

Care staff will be joined on the ground by workers with other organizations such as Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec and Save the Children Canada, all of which are collecting public donations under the umbrella of the Humanitarian Coalition.

An international team of Red Cross aid workers led by Ottawa-based Jean-Pierre Tachereau will also be on the scene. The nearly 60-member group of volunteers from 10 different countries will take in special equipment, including portable water and sanitation treatment plants, Tachereau said.

But Montpetit said already complex aid efforts will be further confounded by the high population in Port-Au-Prince as well as the disarray in the local United Nations chapter. The headquarters of the UN mission collapsed during the quake, killing at least five workers.

The capital is also reeling from the loss of many of its key medical facilities. Three hospitals belonging to Doctors Without Borders are currently out of commission after one collapsed and the other two were rendered so structurally unstable that they had to be abandoned, the group said.

Workers scrambled to set up temporary shelters, where they are now dealing with an influx of seriously wounded quake victims, Paul McPhun, a member of the organization's emergency management team, told a conference call.

The lack of infrastructure has made it impossible for staff to provide adequate treatment, he said.

"The best we can offer them at the moment is first aid care and stabilization," McPhun said.

"The reality of what we're facing is severe traumas: head wounds, crushed limbs, severe problems that cannot be dealt with with the level of medical care that we currently have available with no infrastructure, really, to support it."