Two Ben Avon sisters have landed in Haiti after flying there today to care for children stranded at an orphanage where last month they helped coordinate a dramatic rescue after a severe earthquake.

Jamie and Ali McMutrie, along with Leslie McCombs and her son, Herbie, boarded a private jet at 10:30 a.m. at Allegheny County Airport, bound for Port Au Prince, Haiti, after a stopover in Opa Locka, Fla. The plane landed in Haiti at 4:20 p.m.

The Corporate Air, eight-seat plane will return after dropping off its passengers and about 1,000 pounds of supplies, including tents, cots, medical tools, blankets, diapers and some non-perishable food items for the BRESMA orphanage -- short for Les Brebis de Saint Michel de l'Attalaye.

The estimated $20,000 cost for the one-way flight was donated, a spokesman for Corporate Air said.

The McMutrie sisters are returning to attempt to rescue the remaining 12 or so orphans who were not part of the first rescue Jan. 18, when 54 children from BRESMA were airlifted to Pittsburgh. The remaining children are not among those already slated to be adopted in Europe.

"We're trying to get some of the babies from having to sleep on the ground," said Mrs. McCombs, who senior consultant for government relations for UPMC. She was referring to children at Comfort for All Foundation Orphanage.

All but two of the children are under 2 years old.

Mrs. McCombs said she and the McMutrie sisters don't have all the necessary clearances to remove the children from Haiti. To combat the threat of child trafficking in the midst of the chaos caused by the earthquake, the Haitian government has strengthened its adoption regulations.

Two primary requisites mandate that rescuers obtain proper documentation of a particular child's status, and children confirmed as orphans must already have had a waiting adoptive family before the quake struck, Mrs. McCombs said.

She and the McMutrie sisters said that Raymond Joseph, the Haitian Ambassador to the U.S., made a special trip to Haiti to meet with the president on behalf of the children at the orphanage.

Many of the 28 children remaining at the orphanage's three sites in Haiti are suffering from illnesses, although 16 of them are slated for adoption in France.

The remaining 12 children have no country that will take them, according to a news release issued by Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm representing the sisters. A second trip by the sisters Jan. 30 failed to secure their release.

"We're taking as many supplies as we can fit on the plane, and we're going to stay with the children in the yard, and we're going to stay until we do [get them to the U.S.]," Ali McMutrie said before the flight took off today.

The children now are with nannies and nurses who work for BRESMA.

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