MEXICO CITY — The last words Michelle Reed heard from her 6-year-old adopted son, Esai Reed, in early November were: “Mom, come get me.”

But after U.S. aviation authorities on Tuesday blocked airlines from traveling to Haiti for 30 days following the shooting of a number of planes by gangs, 51-year-old Reed is once again cut off from her adoptive son, who lives in an orphanage in Haiti waiting for paperwork to go through a bureaucratic process hamstrung by Haiti’s spiraling crisis.

As violence once again explodes in the Caribbean nation, Reed worries that Esai may never make it to his new home in Florida, where his two biological brothers wait to reunite with him.

“Our kids sit in Haiti with no way out,” Reed told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “It’s a fear that I feel because I just don’t know if he’ll come home. I don’t know if he’ll survive this.”

Reed is one of dozens of families cut off from their adoptive children, and many more worried about their loved ones on the island – one of the rippling humanitarian consequences that the recent surge of violence and political turmoil have had in Haiti this week.

The chaos began over the weekend when a transitional council, created to restore democratic order to Haiti, fired the interim prime minister, Garry Conille, who had been at odds with the council. When Haiti swore in his replacement, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, on Monday, gangs once again took advantage of the chaos to make power grabs.

Gangs shot at three different planes of U.S. airlines – Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines – landing and taking off in the capital, Port-au-Prince, 85% of which is controlled by gangs, according to United Nations estimates. One flight attendant was injured, and bullets riddled the Spirit airplane.

As a result, the Federal Aviation Administration restricted U.S. airline s from flying to Haiti for 30 days, and American Airlines announced it would pause flights until February. The United Nations also said it was temporarily suspending flights to Port-au-Prince, slashing access to humanitarian aid and personnel in the country.

Meanwhile, firefights broke out across the city, and gangs began to burn homes in upper-class areas. Streets were left empty, and schools, banks and government facilities closed.

Such violent outbursts have forced kids like Reed’s adoptive son – who has been evacuated from his orphanage three times – into even more precarious situations.

The airline restrictions have left Haiti once against isolated from much of the world and with only a trickle of the humanitarian assistance it needs as the Caribbean nation teeters on the brink of famine.

“We call for an end to the escalating violence, to allow for safe, sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the crisis continued to grip Port-au-Prince. Schools were closed and gunfire could be heard on the streets.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Wednesday also reported that a mix of police and vigilante groups had attacked one of their ambulances, slashing tires, tear gassing medical staff and executing at least two wounded patients.

“This act is a shocking display of violence, both for the patients and for MSF medical personnel, and it seriously calls into question MSF’s ability to continue delivering essential care to the Haitian population, which is in dire need,” said Christophe Garnier, the head of the organization’s Haiti mission, in a statement.

Meanwhile, Reed wakes up every morning with a gnawing feeling in her gut, worried that it will be the day she receives a call saying her 6-year-old adoptive Haitian son has been attacked or killed by the country’s gangs.

Reed is part of a group of families in an extended fight with the U.S. State Department and Haitian authorities to get their children out of Haiti.