Haiti – Day 1: Travel

San Diego, CA to Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Departure

At 8:30 am on January 19, 2010, I received a call from Jenise Steverding, Director of Projects and Advancement for Giving Children Hope in Buena Park, CA, asking me if I’d like to join their team to Haiti. The purpose of the trip would be to hand-deliver 600lbs of medical supplies and medicines to one of their partner orphanages, Grace International, in the city of Carrefour, along with checking up on a number of their other partner organizations based in Haiti that had been affected by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12. Without any hesitation I agreed, and at 10:00pm that same night we were on a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Ft. Lauderdale, where we were scheduled to fly to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the following morning.

Giving Children Hope is a faith-based nonprofit organization that specializes in Medical Excess Recovery, and donates their product to orphanages and other humanitarian organizations all over the world. Their facilities include a 43,000 square-foot warehouse from where they store, refurbish and ship most of their product, and at the time of our departure, had already shipped 20,000 lbs of product to their partners in Haiti since the earthquake struck.

After a quick tour of the facilities, and a few prayers, we headed out to LAX to meet up with the remainder of our 6-person team. Along with Jenise, our team included: Norm and Cher Nelson, radio broadcasters with the nationally-syndicated radio program, Compassion Radio; Dr. Cozzette Lyons-Jones, an internist from Orange County, CA; Tom McCoy, a theatre producer and Director of McCoy Rigby Entertainment, who has been a long-time supporter and volunteer with GCHope; and Luke Weaver, a Pastor from New Brunswick, Canada, who has been volunteering in Haiti for over 35 years. Thanks to some opportune connections, GCHope had partnered with Virgin American Airlines to help ship their product to Florida, as well as to provide us with round-trip tickets from Los Angeles.

As is common in most disaster relief efforts, our team encountered several delays and other obstacles which resulted in a one-night stay in Ft. Lauderdale, but on the following morning, January 21, we headed out to Opa-Locka Airport in Miami, FL, where we would board a charter flight arranged by the Medshare group, who was heading a large medical relief effort in Haiti.

Toussant Louverture International Airport – Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Originally scheduled to depart Miami in the morning, several technical difficulties with our charter flight delayed the departure until the afternoon, but by 3:00pm we boarded the plane, landing at Toussant Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, at around 5:30pm.

Communications in any disaster response efforts are of the utmost importance – especially given how difficult they can become as a result of the disaster – and this proved be our first major setback. A team of drivers and pickup trucks from Grace International had arrived at the airport earlier in the afternoon to pick us up, as had been scheduled. But when our flight never arrived, and we were unable to contact the team from Miami, they returned to the orphanage to await news of our arrival. One of the many problems complicating the situation in Haiti has been the widespread occurrence of impromptu tent cities springing up across the affected disaster area. Aside from the complete destruction of hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings, the massive earthquake caused severe damage to countless other structures leaving them virtually uninhabitable. As a result, millions of Haitians have taken up residence in any open space available, whether it be a country club, a park, a parking lot or even the center divide of a main street, to mention just a few. This affected our arrival directly, as by the time we arrived at the airport, it had already become dark, making the roads nearly impassable and certainly unsafe to travel without a military convoy. Jenise, our intrepid leader, sought to obtain some type of military escort, but was denied by both the US military (who was understandably busy at the moment), as well as the UN, who required a 24-hr advance notice for any type of convoy.

As it turned out, we would spend the night on the airport tarmac. While the airport was safe, it was certainly not sound, with a constant stream of USAF C-17 transport behemoths continually arriving at the airport and dropping off supplies, only to leave with a plane full of evacuated US-passport-carrying Haitians. One of the workers from the US Consulate told me that the US would evacuate anyone who had a US passport, but they would have to sign a promissory note to be charged at a later date – most likely when you went to renew your passport – and the charges could be anywhere from $300 – $1000, depending on where your final destination was. “If the government charges for a driver’s license, and a passport, you can be sure they’re going to charge you for a flight, too.” And then he added that all of the people who had been evacuated from Lebanon in the summer of ’06 during the Israeli airstrikes were charged too. Since they were running over a hundred flights into the airport all day and all night, it was clear that we would be spending the evening on the tarmac with the endless companion of the C-17s and their idling, apocalyptic jets, as a host of other international relief planes and jets came in and out of the airport alongside them. Thankfully, the kind people manning the US Consulate desk supplied us with earplugs, and a few Army soldiers donated some MREs to eat, with a few baby-wipes to clean up with.

Instead of spending the entire night on the tarmac with our arms crossed and our ears bleeding, however, a few of us ventured out to locate the University of Miami (Miller School of Medicine) field hospital which had been set up just west of us on the airport grounds. While we didn’t make it all the way there (a second team from GCHope would end up spending several days helping at that hospital), I was able to meet with several different groups including the NY Task Force 1 (FEMA), some soldiers from the US Army 82nd Airborne, and a South African USAR Team, who were waiting to return home after over a week on the ground. The airfield was covered in SAR teams from all over the world, and as a relief worker from HaitiMissing.org wrote: “This is a worldwide response. Walk twenty feet, you are in a different country. Like World Showcase at EPCOT – but certainly not set up for tourists…” Talking with some of the South Africans, they noted that among the many disasters they had been deployed to (Turkey ‘99, Iran ‘03/’05, Algeria ’03, India ’05 and Pakistan ‘08), most considered this deployment to be the worst they had been to, but were quick to note that it had “fortunately” happened in the middle of the day.

Because the airport terminal had suffered considerable damage, it was unsafe to try and find anywhere inside to sleep, so the remainder of the night was left to watching the transport planes come in and out, and the host of foreign nations and other NGOs that were present: the UN, Russia, Spain, Cuba, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, WHO, and PAHO, among many, many others. While the airport was officially under the command of the US Air Force, there was a noticeable involvement by UN patrols, the US Army, Foreign Service Specialists with the US Consulate, and Haitian law enforcement agents. For the most part, the Army was in charge of patrolling the airfield perimeter, traveling in Humvees and Army ambulances, and every so often either they or a USAF patrol would come up with a detained Haitian whom they would hand over to Haitian agents. While I was unable to understand any of the conversations Haitian police were having with those they had detained, a couple of Air Force MPs told me that many of them had snuck in over the gates and were trying to get out on one of the outgoing US-bound planes, or they were looking for food and water. In most cases, they were simply escorted out of the airport and put back on the streets.

Later that morning, as we were sitting with our bags awaiting our ride, a new line of Haitians were quietly waiting to board a C-17 when we felt what would be the first of many aftershocks throughout the week. The Haitians had been seated along a line of folding chairs only a few feet from the airport terminal, and as soon as the aftershocks hit, several had leapt over the row of chairs before we even knew what was going on. Many of them stared at the terminal wall for a little while after, as the fear and sheer terror in their eyes spoke volumes – who knew what horrors these unfortunate people had lived through for the past week?

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Read More:

Haiti Earthquake Project – Home
Day 1: Travel – San Diego to Haiti
Day 2: Port-au-Prince to Carrefour
Day 2: Grace International Orphanage & Tent City
Day 2: Medical Clinic at Grace Int’l
Day 2: “The Transport from Haiti”
Day 3: Carrefour – Boys’ Home Clinic (updates soon)
Day 4: UN/PROMESS Trip 1; Medical Teams International (updates soon)
Day 5: UN/PROMESS Trip 2 (updates soon)
Day 6: Boys’ Home Clinic: Freelance Relief Workers (updates soon)