As United Airlines Flight 9022 descended upon the Toussaint
Louverture International Airport north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
one word came to Gilroyan Chris Pauley’s mind: devastation.
As United Airlines Flight 9022 descended upon the Toussaint Louverture International Airport north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, one word came to Gilroyan Chris Pauley’s mind: devastation.
Reduced to a tent city by the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that rocked Haiti Jan. 12, Port-au-Prince looked like Armageddon had struck, said Pauley, 43, who joined nine other Kaiser Permanente nurses in a week-long mission to the tiny island nation.
“It wasn’t even a Third World country anymore,” she said. “It was Fourth World.”
In the following week, while she and her fellow nurses set up makeshift medical outposts around the ruined city, “I did not see a single well person,” Pauley said.
From treating bones that had been broken for more than two weeks to tending to everyday ailments such as dehydration and malnutrition, the nurses were scrambling to keep up and making due with what few resources they had, Pauley said. They worked feverishly, seeing more than 300 patients each day and burning through caches of two of the country’s top needs – medicine and supplies.
Upon her return to Gilroy Wednesday, the first thing Pauley did was take a hot shower and a long nap.
Just as Pauley was catching up on her sleep, United States Air Force Airman 1st Class Chris Castleman was reuniting with his wife, Thea, who grew up in Gilroy and attended area schools, at their Florida home. Castleman, 26, arrived in Port-au-Prince two days after the quake and stayed three weeks, spending nights tossing and turning in a tent pitched on the airport’s tarmac. The tent, however, was luxurious compared to the sheets and cardboard boxes many Haitians used as shelter, Castleman said.
“It didn’t look too bad from the air but then we landed and it was chaos,” he said. “At first, it was frantic. No one knew what was going on. But it got more organized. The relief effort is amazing.”
For three weeks, Castleman spent the 95-degree days marshaling airplanes carrying supplies into the country; unloading crates of food, medical supplies and clothing; reconfiguring the planes for passengers; and shipping thousands of injured locals off to more stable ground.
While he was there, Castleman saw thousands of relief workers come and go, and even had the opportunity to meet former President Bill Clinton and actor John Travolta, who led a humanitarian mission called Scientologists to Haiti.
What struck Castleman
most was the fortitude of
the Haitian people, even under
the most painful and desperate conditions.
“I never saw one kid cry,” he said. “They cut off this one kid’s arm and she didn’t even cry. I got two kids and if that happened to one of them, I would have cried.”
As relief aid flooded into Port-au-Prince, humans weren’t the only ones lending a hand – or a paw. A crew of canine companions trained in Gilroy at Sundowners Kennels saved at least eight victims from the rubble.
On Jan. 15, Los Angeles County Fire Captain Bill Monahan and his dog, Hunter – a red and white border collie – located three girls trapped in the remains of a four-story building in a neighborhood near the Presidential Palace, according to the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, an organization that pairs the adopted dogs trained at Sundowners with search and rescue teams across the nation. Rescue workers managed to extricate the girls from the wreckage.
On Jan. 18, six days after the earthquake struck, canine search teams located five women trapped in a hotel and another collapsed building. To the chants of “USA! USA!” crews dug the women out and delivered them to safety.
“This is the moment that (Search Dog Foundation) Search Teams train for – week in and week out,” the organization’s founder, Wilma Melville, wrote on the organization’s Web site. “When one (Search Dog Foundation) team succeeds, all of our teams succeed. Our thoughts are with our teams in Haiti, who continue to comb the rubble into the night. Their perseverance, skill, and strength in the face of extreme challenges make us all proud, and give us hope.”
