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Follow us on TwitterHaiti Earthquake Recon: Day Four
Posted by John Pappas on April 09, 2010 at 7:32pm
It’s Day 4 in Haiti, and I guess we have had it pretty good as far as weather goes—only in the upper 80s and not unbearably humid, just sticky all the time.
Travel in Haiti is highly variable. There is this fabulous highway that runs from outside of Port-au-Prince (PAP) to the north for about 40 miles. It is probably only about two years old and very nice, but strange because as you get near a town, the paving disappears and you drive on the most horrific rocky road that you can imagine. (Heads bobble wildly from side to side.) When there is pavement, the potholes are so large that the drivers swerve drastically, like they are drunk, to avoid them. When you get to the little villages, they have these monster speed bumps causing the drivers to slow down to a crawl, gradually easing their way over the hump, and then ploppling precipitously over the back side. Thankfully, we didn’t take the seven-hour ride to Milot from Deschapelles, but instead took a three-hour drive back to PAP, and then a 23-minute flight over the mountains to Cap Haitian. While getting out at the airport, we were swarmed by a multitude of “helpers,” everyone grabbing at our bags and offering to taxi us. We were fortunate to have a couple of experienced American and English nurses to save us who we cowered behind as they negotiated the deal. We were then directed to a small SUV where four of us clamored into the back seat sitting on each other’s laps. The next 30 minutes to Milot were brutal, but we survived again.
The work the Haitians are doing here is pretty remarkable. They make do with what they have, and the hospital staff is very resourceful. The number of amputees is astounding, and their attitudes and smiles are even more remarkable. The work that Hanger Prosthetics is doing at Hôpital Albert Schweitzer is fantastic, too. They have shipped an entire production facility of sanders, milling machines, ovens, and molds to be able to create new prosthetic devices. Their plan is to train the Haitians and transition the whole facility over to them within two years. The lead guy transitions every three months with two to three others on shorter rotations
Most of the hospital facilities are pretty primitive and where more sophisticated engineering systems were installed, they have since been removed after they experienced failures, and there was no one who could maintain them. Some of the spaces are well detailed for the environment with jalousie windows and venting clerestories to facilitate air movement through the building. The only source of electricity is from generators that the hospitals run, and there are always problems with people trying to steal this power. The worst thing is that people hire kids to scale the trees and strip the wires to make these illegal taps, often resulting in shocking injuries as these lines are hot.
More later.
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