Jan 21st

I am beginning to understand the impact that this earthquake has had on Haiti and the people. There was another shock today causing the people to run out of the CDTI hospital where our surgeons have been working. The decision was made that the hospital was unsafe and we started evacuating patients. We spoke to the 82^nd airborne and got promises to have 12 of the patients at CDTI evacuated to the hospital ships where they would get surgery first thing in the morning. One woman refused surgery and refused to go. They asked me to come and translate for her and when I told her that if she didn’t have surgery on her broken femur she might never walk again, she said, “It’s not the surgery I’m afraid of, I just won’t go back in that building!”

We loaded up 5 patients in our van and a car, wincing ourselves as they screamed in pain, and broke curfew to get them to the state hospital. It took us almost an hour to find someone who would let us unload them, and finally all we could do was put them down on the street, no padding, no stretcher just a thin sheet over the asphalt. One of the men screamed when we put him down, and as I tried to calm him, by telling him that his pain would be treated soon, he screamed, “don’t put me next to that building, put me under that tree where nothing will fall on me!” We rushed back to CDTI hospital to pick up the 7 remaining patients and I notice that there WERE new cracks in the walls which weren’t there yesterday.

Earlier, we drove out to Fontamarra to the LDS chapel to assess the needs there. Noel our healing hands driver was with me. The scenes of destruction and the stench of death were numbing. House after house crumbled or leaning, ready to collapse, one door frame standing unharmed with no house surrounding it. It was hard to believe I was seeing what my eyes were telling me. Noel told me about the quake for him. His daughters ages 18 and 8 were at the market when the quake hit. He ran to the market to find it was not there. Frantic he crawled over the rubble calling his daughters’ names until finally he heard one of them calling “Papa, papa help me!” He crawled as close as he could and spent the next 3 days and nights comforting his children urging them to feel around for something to eat or drink until they were finally rescued on the fourth day. Both were seriously injured but alive. I could see the anguish in his eyes as he described sleeping next to his daughters’ voices. I could only imagine the terror I would feel if I couldn’t get to my own daughters.

Antonio called me this evening and told me that he had an architect go over the guest house and that it wasn’t safe for us to use. So that makes all of our buildings gone. I am saddened not so much for the loss of our compound, but for the fact that in the next few months there will be so many who need rehabilitation services and we won’t be able to provide them. I am glad that Noel’s daughters are alive, and I’m glad that 12 people will have surgery to fix their broken bodies. I have seen strange and terrible things in Haiti this week---things that I hope I never see again.