HAITI MISSION SPOTLIGHT
DR. RODNEY MOORE was among the leaders of a large contingent of Brevard County, Florida medical professionals who responded to the Haitian earthquake's tragic aftermath.
EDITOR’S NOTE: There were so many people from the area that responded to the Haitian plight with financial and on-site aid and relief that it was impossible to identify and recognize everyone in this feature article. However, the story of humanitarian need has just begun, and we will be covering ongoing Space Coast relief efforts in both Space Coast Medicine magazine and SpaceCoastMedicine.com. We welcome those of you who participated in the relief effort to share your stories and photos with us at SpaceCoastMedicine@gmail.com
THREE MILLION people were affected by the January 2010 earthquake. The Haitian Government reports that between 217,000 and 230,000 people had been identified as dead, 300,000 injured and 1 million homeless. Photo By Craig Kempf
The news traveled quickly on that Tuesday afternoon. Minutes before 5 p.m. on Jan. 12, a 7.0 earthquake had struck Haiti. The epicenter was located 10 miles from Port-au-Prince, the capital of a country with no real construction standards, and where 80 percent of the population lives in poverty.
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Millions worldwide watched in disbelief as the magnitude of the disaster unfolded. Many were moved to contribute financially to relief efforts. A smaller number were compelled to act in a more personal way.
Following are the stories of Brevard and Indian River County, Florida residents who turned their compassion into action to serve the people of Haiti.
GLEN WOMBLE, RN
After giving his time and talents at his own expense to help strangers, the last thing people would expect Glen Womble to feel is guilt. And yet he struggles with the memories of his time in Haiti.
“There’s horrible guilt. You couldn’t help everybody. You’d walk past them all day long. We’d be there at 7 in the morning and not leave till 10 at night, and the same people would still be there, waiting.
“They weren’t belligerent, like an American would be. They’d just quietly look at you and hold up their x-ray,” he said.
Womble arrived in Haiti as part of a 12-person team of doctors, nurses and physician assistants from Brevard County on the Sunday following the quake. He’d spent the days following the event making calls and gathering equipment. Even with each team member carrying as much as they could, it wasn’t enough for the mass casualties they encountered.
BATTLEFIELD MEDICINE: Brian Janke PA-C, Dr. Amy Pearson, Dr. Mike McLaughlin were part of a 12-person team that traveled on a flight with Missionary Flights International out of Fort Pierce. They were supported by Dr. Steve Badolato, who stayed behind to work on logistics from Brevard.
The group set up a makeshift operating room at CDTI, a small private hospital in Port-au-Prince, a short flight but a world away from what they were used to, and got to work.
There was one sterilizer that was run once a day, and instruments were sloshed in a basin of Betadine between uses. Volunteers performed amputations with a trash bag underneath the patient. If you didn’t have a sponge, you’d use the paper wrapper from your gloves to wipe blood out of the way.
The parking lot outside the hospital had become a small tent city of people recovering from treatment, or waiting to be seen. After working on patients, Womble would carry them back out, find an empty piece of pavement for them to lie on, and choose the next.
“You’re picking patients not based on who needed it the most, but who you could do next because you had the equipment,” he said. He remembers looking at his supplies and realizing he had what he needed to repair a femur fracture.
“You’d go outside, and there’d be 32 femur fractures. Who do you pick?” he asked. “You get the one who has the best chance of being alive tomorrow.”
Amputated Limbs
He felt guilty stealing a few minutes during the day to eat a power bar and drink some water from the provisions they’d brought with them. The team used a small room in the hospital to take a quick bite.
“Then the door would open, and you’d see them looking at you. They hadn’t eaten since the day of the earthquake. You’d want to give them food, but you couldn’t do that. You’d create a riot,” he said.
The team stayed in a United Nations building nearby at night. When they returned to the hospital in the morning, one of the first duties was to check the tents for people who had died overnight. They put them in a pile that continued to grow with further casualties, the bodies on the bottom becoming bloated and oozing.
The team also created a pile of amputated arms and legs.
“You couldn’t get anyone to take the limbs,” Womble said. “They were their own pile of stink.”
TEAMWORK: Back row left to right, Dr. Anthony Ware, Dr. Michael McLaughlin and Paul Van Hemel, RN. Front row, left to right, Dr. Lyle Ashberg, Dr. Michelle Henderson, Dr. Chris Vonderheide, Glenn Womble, RNFA, Elizabeth Van Hemel, PA-C and Alex Von Lignau.
Aftershock Is Frightening
That first trip lasted until Wednesday, when a 6.1 aftershock jolted the team awake and sent them running downstairs and out of the second floor of the UN building.
“It was like trying to stand up on a moving roller coaster,” Womble said. The team had been running low on supplies anyway, and the strong aftershock confirmed the feelings of many that it was time to leave.
Womble since has made a second trip, armed again with donations, much of them from Browning Pharmacy in Melbourne. He’s now collecting walkers, canes and wheelchairs to send to Haiti, and is trying to find a way to get them there.
Even as he continues to help, the memories are difficult to process.
There was one patient, a woman, who he can’t forget. She had a femur fracture and was accompanied by a teenage boy – maybe her son, Womble thought – who was in good health. The boy continually tried to get Womble or another caregiver to look at the woman.
“I remember for several days, I would pass that person. I was haunted by his eyes. You could see him thinking, ‘I thought I was next,’ every time we took a patient in. That kind of guilt is what bothered me,” Womble said.
He doesn’t know what happened to the woman with the boy. She hadn’t been seen when he left, and she was gone by his second trip. “Whether she got help or transferred or passed away, I don’t know,” Womble said. “She was so far down the line. She had a really bad injury.
“You take the ones you could fix and make a difference, not the ones you don’t have a shot at helping.”
ELIZABETH VAN HEMEL, PA-C
Upon hearing the news of the tragedy, physician assistant Elizabeth Van Hemel immediately began helping to organize donations and find transportation to Haiti. She’d been to the country several times with church groups and knew she’d be involved in the relief effort.
DR. DAVID WILLIAMS examines a patient on a stretcher in a staging area prior to surgery. Parking lots served as recovery areas.
Dr. Steve Badolato
She was part of the 12-person team that Womble traveled with on a flight with Missionary Flights International out of Fort Pierce. They were supported by Dr. Steve Badolato, who stayed behind to work on logistics from Brevard.
At CDTI, supplies went fast. During a surgery on the second day, the dwindling supply of oxygen ran out. After that, they used Ketamine, which blocked pain for a couple hours, but stopped short of putting patients asleep. Instead, they were able to watch the physicians amputate their damaged limb.
Many of the amputations were done with a guillotine method, which Van Hemel explains is much as it sounds: a straight cut that leaves bone and tissue exposed.
“That is battlefield medicine – you cut the limb off to save their life,” she said. A day or two later, someone would go back to clean the wound and create a flap.
In the absence of charts or other means of keeping records, the team started taping a sheet of paper to each patient’s chest, noting what had been done and what needed to be done next.
If they put a cast on a patient, they used a Sharpie pen to note the date and what was done so the next team of caregivers could follow up.
They were careful to use plaster casts instead of fiberglass, Van Hemel said, keeping in mind that there might not be a saw available to remove the fiberglass when it was time.
Amazing Dignity and Grace
Patients in various stages of care would camp outside the hospital, often in family groups. Many times, they had no where else to go.
“It was loud and chaotic – almost pandemonium during the daytime. There were hundreds of people in the courtyard,” Van Hemel said.
Still, there was no wailing or moaning as one might expect among so much suffering. “The patients were stoic, including the children. The Haitian people have an amazing dignity and grace. They did not grab you. They’d ask for your help, but they were very polite,” she said.
At night, the impromptu tent village was quiet, as people cared for each other until help arrived again in the morning. “They’re not complainers. They’re used to hardship,” she said, describing the prevailing attitude: “This was a hardship, and we’ll persevere this.”
DR. DIRK PARVUS, EMERGENCY MEDICINE
For days after the earthquake, Dr. Dirk Parvus waited for word on the clinic he helped establish three years ago in Cite Soleil, just six miles from the epicenter of the quake.
Dr. Dirk Parvus examines a young patient in Cite Soleil, an impoverished region near Port-au-Prince.
Still having heard nothing, he left on Saturday, Day 4 after the earthquake, for the Dominican Republic. Once on the ground in the DR, his team of seven people carrying medical supplies hired a car and headed for Citi Soleil.
When they arrived, they found surrounding buildings destroyed, but the clinic was standing.
That there was even a building to begin with was an astonishing accomplishment. What started as a two-day clinic in June 2007 has evolved into a facility staffed by a Haitian doctor and two Haitian nurses, and visited monthly by American teams. On a regular day at the clinic, the staff sees more than 100 patients, with that number swelling up to 1,000 when volunteer teams are working.
Since the earthquake, people have responded generously. “There’s been quite an outpouring of support,” Parvus said, noting that 100 percent of donations to the clinic go to the work in Haiti.
Long Term Commitment
His fact-finding trip after the quake was brief. Housing volunteers was a problem, and Parvus knew his help would be needed for years to come, so he returned to coordinate trips and supplies.
He’s looking forward to future trips to provide the follow-up care that the country lacks. “These poor guys. If they were able to survive the surgery, now they’re going to be in Haiti. It’s a tough place to survive anyway, and now they haven’t got an arm or a leg,” Parvus said.
He’s confident that the Haitians’ resilience will prevail, and heard a story from a recent volunteer team that illustrates his observation. A Vero Beach woman was helping at the clinic when she was suddenly overcome by the misery she was witnessing. Reassurance came from a Haitian.
“This woman came up to comfort her. She’d lost her teenage daughter, has no house and is comforting the American who is crying,” Parvus said. “That’s what the Haitians are like. They’re more concerned for you than for themselves.”
DR. CHRIS VONDERHEIDE, ANESTHESIOLOGIST
From the air, the situation in Haiti appeared unremarkable. That first impression was dispelled after the team landed.
The smell of rotting human flesh permeated the air, Dr. Chris Vonderheide remembers, and ubiquitous low hanging power lines proved a hazard. Multistory buildings were flattened. The concrete that protected inhabitants during hurricanes had collapsed and crushed them in the earthquake.
The team arrived at CDTI and started working. The pace was fast, and workers were exhausted emotionally and physically. The worst part for Vonderheide was selecting the next patient from the crowd and telling him or her that they needed to agree to an amputation, or they would likely die. They had only minutes to decide before the team would move on to the next patient.
“Many would refuse and leave,” he said. Some would cry, joined by Vonderheide, unable to be detached in the face of such suffering.
One man cut off his foot to escape the rubble. Children who lost their entire families were at the hospital, now needing an amputation. He remembers wheeling a child outside immediately after surgery, and finding space for him to lie down. He set him on his used surgery gown, his only cushion against the hard, hot concrete.
“There was not even a piece of cardboard to be found, let alone a mattress. I got two apples for him and set them next to him. We did not even have water for him to drink,” said Vonderheide. Having to walk through the compound with almost every patient in desperate need of something critical was overwhelming.
“Every patient that packed the halls or compound was begging to be helped but we walked on by for the next patient for surgery. I felt cold but knew a patient had an even more urgent need. This was civil war medicine,” he said.
After surgery, the team pitched in to clean blood-soaked floors and stretchers. Large cracks in the walls served as constant reminders of the risk they were taking with their own lives.
CRAIG KEMPF in Durissy, Haiti, in the mountains above Petit-Goâve. “There is no power and no generator,” said Kempf. “It is as primitive as it can get in a modern world. Imagine no power... none. No running water, no plumbing, no sewage. The people with homes, live in huts. This is the real tragedy and it has been going on long before the earthquake.”
CRAIG KEMPF, PILOT & PHOTOGRAPHER
Craig Kempf’s association with Haiti started in China. While Kempf and his wife, Caroline, were going through the process of adopting their 5-year-old son from China, they grew close to the social worker who helped them. She later asked for their help establishing relationships with orphanages in Haiti to facilitate adoptions.
Craig Kempf traveled to the country and hasn’t been the same since.
“We’ve been all over the world, and I’ve never been impacted like that. I’ve never seen that level of poverty with such a positive spirit,” he said.
He returned to the United States and talked about Haiti to anyone who would listen.
His organization, Follow Me To Haiti, focuses on education by offering to connect donors to Haitians through an adopt-a-classroom program. It also addresses immediate needs. Kempf, a pilot, is making weekly cargo runs to deliver emergency relief supplies to the country. The organization takes no administrative expenses; all donations go to Haiti.
THE EARTHQUAKE caused major damage to Port-au-Prince, Jacmel and other settlements in the region. Many notable landmark buildings were significantly damaged or destroyed, including the Presidential Palace (at right). Photo By Craig Kempf
After hearing about the earthquake, Kempf started looking for a flight to Haiti. He found space for himself and some supplies on a Missionary Flights International plane, but the group couldn’t promise a ride back. “I decided to jump on it and figure it out later,” he said.
He took the trip one step at a time. He had no contact at the airport, but just started talking to people. He met a California pilot who offered him a ride back to Fort Lauderdale. After helping the pilot deliver his cargo, Kempf hoped to stay and do whatever was needed.
What was needed, those on the ground in Haiti told him, was for him to go back to Florida and coordinate more donations. Kempf was disappointed, but agreed with the logic.
That first trip lasted just 24 hours, but he’s taken many more since the earthquake. “This is something I can’t not do,” he said.
There have been dramatic moments. At one point in Cap-Haitien, he found the customs office he needed to visit was closed. Some locals took the opportunity to confine Kempf and his companion in a closet, impersonate customs officers and demand cash.
After the two convinced their captors they needed their money for fuel and weren’t going to give it up, they let them go. They left with smiles and handshakes, and Kempf said he never felt he was in danger.
People were living in tents, having either lost their homes or fearing more aftershocks. “Tent,” Kempf said, was a generous term. “They were like forts we made when we were kids,” he said.
DR. MICHELLE HENDERSON, SURGEON
Dr. Michelle Henderson discusses a patient's condition with a colleague.
Like many medical professionals, Michelle Henderson had volunteered in Haiti and was ready to go again when news of the tragedy came.
She helped organize the team heading to CDTI where they were met with scenes of massive destruction, blocked roads and people lying in the streets.
The smell of death and infection was everywhere. The team encountered tension with the Haitian doctors, which, with no-nonsense hard work and diplomacy on the part of the relief team, was gradually dispelled as the week wore on.
“Various church groups and agencies showed up and asked what we needed. I am disappointed in the United States government and I never saw the Red Cross. I saw some Marines once, and told them we needed a MASH tent. They never came back,” Henderson said.
Outside the gate of the building where they stayed, hundreds of homeless people slept on the ground with no shelter. The lucky ones had a blanket. The team heard guns firing in the distance, and hymns being sung nearby. “I was told they sang because they were scared of the evil spirits of the dead, and hymns of praise would keep them away,” Henderson said.
The main water pipe was broken, so the team had a trickle of water for 20 minutes a day to flush toilets and take showers.
When the aftershock struck, she thought someone was shaking her bed to wake her up. But the shaking didn’t stop, and she heard team member Glen Womble yelling “Go go go!” Everyone ran out of the house, then packed their bags and headed to the airport.
On the way, Henderson had second thoughts about staying. When she arrived at the airport, supplies had come in that would allow her to keep working. She and another physician decided to stay.
“All different cultures, religions, organizations, just wanting to help, working together through language barriers to care for people suffering from this tragedy of biblical proportion was truly amazing,” she said.
Dr. Sials Charles
DR. SILAS CHARLES, Cancer Care Centers
Haitian relief efforts will go $100,000 further, thanks to Dr. Silas Charles. The Melbourne oncologist donated the six-figure sum to Ruuska Village, a Haitian orphanage damaged in the Jan. 12 earthquake.
“Haiti has been on my mind for a long time,” said Charles, who worked on a project to provide water purification systems for outlying villages. When he saw news coverage of recent devastation, he knew he had to do more. “I was shocked,” he said.
Charles pledged to match IndiaFest fundraising efforts for Haiti up to $100,000. That effort netted $120,000 for Haitian relief, so a total of $220,000 is heading to the impoverished country. “Hopefully, some kids will benefit from it,” Charles said.
Charles is practiced in giving at home and abroad. The founder of local cancer care centers, the doctor also started the Cancer Care Foundation to provide medical care and prescriptions for those who can’t afford it.
The move formalized a practice he’d carried on behind the scenes for years, offering free care and even personally helping patients with living expenses during treatment. He also helped establish medical facilities to care for people, regardless of their ability to pay, in India and is working toward that goal in Ethiopia.
As director of Cancer Care Centers of Brevard, Charles invests in technology to keep the level of care as high as possible. He refers to the financial risk as a “faith gamble” – when money is spent in the interests of patient health, he maintains, good things are sure to happen.
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