A letter from Haiti: After the earthquake

"This earthquake was like no other. . . It is like kicking a baby down before he knows how to stand."

We are all OK. Our house still stands. That is a blessing. If that were not the case, we would not have been able to help so many after the quake hit.

I was in the kitchen; my son Grayden was in his room. Bridgely was in the house, close to the door. We think one of the twins was in her bedroom and one was on the porch. Teagan and Laurens were on the porch.

It started as a low hum and shake; then it grew....

My mind thought, "That is strange." Then, "What is that?" In a matter of seconds, the house came alive. The shaking was incredible. I remember seeing the concrete walls moving violently in a wave, like at a wave pool. One to my right, one to my left and then one in front of me moving in a different direction. The ceiling was also moving in a wave above me. The floor beneath my feet did not feel attached.

Grayden ran to me, screaming. Hysterical screams. I clung him tightly to me and instinctively semi-crouched. All of this may have only taken a few seconds – I don't know.

The next thing I remember was Laurens running in the house yelling, "Get out, get out, get out...RUN!" As he grabbed my arm, I went into full action. Still clinging to Grayden, I ran to the door, grabbing as many of my children as I could. Yelling, myself, "RUN, RUN, RUN, GO, GO!" We reached the steps to the garden and I remember how difficult it was to run down them as the concrete steps were moving. I remember running through the front drive with the land still moving. Laurens was still yelling to run further, to get away from the building. The dog followed us all.

When I got to the end of the driveway, I looked around and counted kids. I could not see Bridgely. I turned back to the building and screamed "BRIDGELY, BRIDGELY, BRIDGELY!" I thought he was still on the upper level at our neighbour's. Then, there he was in front of me. He had been holding my hand the whole time.

When we were somewhere between the driveway and the road, the movement stopped, for a moment. Then it started again: smaller, but almost as big as the first and long as well. I gathered the kids and instructed them to sit, and we huddled until it stopped. Then it started again. Finally, the earth rested for a while.

One huge dust cloud
I stood up and turned around. From our rural hill not far from Port au Prince, we have a view of the whole city. When I looked out towards the city and the ocean, I realized what had just happened. The entire city went up in dust. One huge, even dust cloud arose from the entire massive city. It was like a bomb had gone off and it was the smoke rising. That may have been enough to deal with, except that we realized that we had a team of 53 Canadians visiting on a short-term mission trip. We went into leader mode.

Laurens went to check on things and I gathered the team. Grant went to get the ambulance and I gathered the visiting nurses and doc. We jumped into the ambulance and headed down to the clinic. Grant took the team in and I rushed to the front gate of our mission. By the time I got there, the injured started arriving. They came in tap tap (a pick-up truck taxi) after tap tap. Children, women and men.

Their arms and legs were crushed, their bones sticking out of their bodies, their heads gashed open. Some were crying in pain, some were barely alive. Five, six, seven people per truck.

It looked like war
For the next 33 hours, we worked on the traumatic cases that lay before us. It looked like war. We did not know the integrity of the clinic yet so we could not go inside.

The aftershocks started to come and were frequent. We had to get supplies inside but ran back out with every aftershock. The injured were lying all over our outside walkway.

Grant, our visiting nurses and I worked on triaging the worst patients. We are not a full-service hospital; we are just a clinic.

We heard that the biggest hospital in Port au Prince, General Hospital, had crashed down. Doctors without Borders had crashed (the only two main ER's in the entire city!) We got further reports that other hospitals were down. We started to realize that we were all there was for miles and miles and miles.

At the 20th hour, we told the gate we could not accept any more patients as we still had to get through many, many more. We sent our nurses (except for a few) and our helpers to work in shifts and Grant and I worked on.

We reduced (tractioned bones back in place) open compound fractures, putting tibia bones that were sticking out back into people's legs. We reduced and set many many femur fractures, lower leg fractures, arm fractures. We sutured arms, legs, heads. We put scalps back together and we cleaned concrete out of wounds for hours. We stabilized pelvic fractures and we helped babies with head trauma to breathe on oxygen.

We had three die. One baby, one two-year-old and one 10-year-old. We had four others on the brink of death. We saved a lot. We had no other choice; there was nowhere to send them. At the end of 33 hours, we had discharged all but five. Three wanted to go home to die.

Full of bodies, inside and out
Most hospitals were still not functioning and those that were, were full of bodies, inside and out. Bodies were piled up in the parking lots because there was nowhere to put them. Most of the doctors who used to work at the hospitals were dead or not heard from. Families had nowhere to take their loved ones’ bodies because their houses were crashed down, they still were missing family members or the funeral homes were destroyed...So they left them.

We went home and slept for six hours, and then opened the clinic again. We worked for another 10 hours, seeing the same things. Finally, it stopped. There were no more tap taps running because there was no more diesel.

That same night, our president of missionofhopehaiti.org arrived and we started disaster relief planning with some partner organizations. By this time, reports of what the damage in the country looked like were becoming clear. U.S. and Canadian doctors began arriving from the Dominican Republic to help.

We have 160 staff on our mission and we already know of one that has died; we still have not heard from about 100 staff. Every day when someone shows up, it's joyous to see that they are alive. Most everyone has a family member who has died. One security guard has four children who died.

Many of our Haitian staff suffer severe post traumatic stress after what they have been through or seen. One of our friends was trapped in his school, next to 50 of his classmates who were crushed by the building. He heard them screaming but could not save them. He watched them die, as he was trapped inside for three hours with a dead man on his chest. He was pulled out eventually.

Fear – and hope
Every time a plane passes over or a car drives up, we all brace ourselves and jump until we realize that it is not another quake. Aftershocks are stressful. We often have a false sense that the ground is moving.

People are afraid to go into buildings. Our building is structurally OK, but I do not like to be in my bedroom for long – it is too far from the door. Laurens sleeps on the couch, to be closer to the kids for evacuation. We sleep with the front door open for quick escape.

This earthquake was like no other. Mainly because it hit a country with such poor infrastructure. It was completely unexpected. It is like kicking a baby down before it knows how to stand.

But we are moving on. We are alive and our house is fine. Mission of Hope is an oasis compared to the city. The kids are good. They are resilient.

Despite the destruction, we are seeing hope. God has big things planned for this country. He has used us in mighty ways this past week. He has used us for the Haitian people.

I have learned more in one week than most in a lifetime. I now know how to reduce compound open wound fractures, I know how to cast, I know how to suture and have become proficient enough that I sutured the flap of someone's nose back on (quite good, too, I might add :)), I know how to take a stab at coordinating disaster relief and to run functional field clinics.

Rachel (a missionary here) and I were just saying today that if someone had told us that this is what we would have had to do this week prior to this event, we would have quit. We would have said, "No way, God!" I can't do all of that. We have learned that God knows more than we do, that He knows what we can handle and He has more faith in us than we have in ourselves.

We thank you for your prayers this past week. This is not over, it is a long road ahead. Please pray for the Haitian people. Please pray for supply chains to open up, pray for the port to be fixed, pray for timely food and water distributions, pray for organization of relief organizations and military. Pray that, now, eyes will be opened to the need we had prior to this earthquake; our clinic and hospital, and that funding will come in. Pray for our family and the other staff.

Cheryl

Editor's note: If you would like to make a donation to the Mission of Hope Haiti, please visit ftccanada.ca/moh. Select "Hospital/Clinic of Hope" to make a donation to the clinic where Cheryl works.