Notes From Haiti: Behind The Scenes Of A Disaster

Scott Sundick: People are being shot in the street in port au prince because they are not receiving surgical treatment. We are here with empty operating rooms and trauma teams waiting for patients. Just get them here. – Jan. 17, 7:10 a.m.

“Eventually the US coast guard, and then the Navy began transporting patients to us from Port Au Prince for care. Now we are working non stop in 3 OR’s and doing what we can with limited equipment and dwindling supplies. “

A day later, these status updates trickled in:

Scott Sundick: Now they are flying patients in non-stop and transferring them from other hospitals. I guess they finally realized we are here. – Jan. 18, 2:12 p.m.

Scott Sundick: The UN has officially sent troops to our hospital, and the US navy stopped by via helicopter with injured patients. – Jan. 18, 5:18 p.m.

Scott Sundick: We now have a steady flow of helicopters, 2 an hour, coming to us. Exhausting. – Jan. 19, 1:50 p.m.

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There are many reasons doctors spend 8 years beyond undergraduate school. They are not only being trained to save lives, but how to react to tense, pressure filled situations that the rest of us – e.g., communications majors – will never see.

Scott Sundick: We just got a patient who was injured, and Haitian doctors had done an amputation in the street, with no anesthesia – Jan. 18, 5:21 p.m.

Doctors and rescue workers, as we all know from the reporting we’ve seen, are working in the dark. Lack of supplies, lack of communication and lack of order add up to chaos. Chaos leads to panic and those emergency workers on the ground in Haiti are crisis experts, calming and soothing patients as they line up for life-saving operations that, in a different nation, could have been prevented by simply cleaning the initial wound.

Haiti is becoming a nation of amputees. The images coming out of the country are harrowing, to say the least. But more disheartening is that many of the images of amputees are of children.

From Scott:

So far the biggest problem now is that we are running low on supplies.

The major problem was with the delay in caring for people. At this point, and at the point when we have been getting people, it is too late to save the limbs. We are forced to amputate to save the patients life.

Scott Sundick: It is getting harder and harder to work as the number of kids younger [than] 3 are requiring amputations – Jan. 19, 1:43 p.m.

Scott Sundick: Children are arriving by helicopter with tape on their foreheads saying their parents were killed. – Jan. 19, 9:57 a.m.

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Scott and his colleagues at CRUDEM are saving lives and are working around the clock. Others on the ground in Haiti and millions around the world have their attention focused on this ravaged island. At least for now. It is our responsibility to do what we can – whether it’s texting donations or putting together care packages of basic supplies: band-aids, Neosporin, aspirin, water.

Again, from CRUDEM’s blog:

The CRUDEM Foundation has been working in Haiti for a long time; it will be there for a long time to come. Even for a stable, respected organization such as this, the road ahead will be increasingly challenging – both for the hospital and for those who receive its services. The high number of amputations is creating a need for crutches and prostheses – items that are not typically stocked in large numbers. As patients are able to be released from the hospital, they will need a place to stay. Many will need to remain in the area in order to receive follow up care. There are few houses in Milot – most people live in shelters constructed of tin. But they are committed to share what they have. The hospital and the community will do what needs to be done. But they will need help.

Scott Sundick: Now its getting hard. people are dying in the hospital from their injuries. You don’t check labs because they take too long, and you could not give blood anyway, but you can’t delay surgery because they will die from waiting. – Jan. 20

CRUDEM and other thinly stretched organizations are proving that “hope” is not a four-letter word. Let’s stare down tragedy and death and effect change. We can use this disaster as an opportunity to rebuild a nation, but also to rebuild what it means to be human. There is no color; there is no class distinction; there is no gender inequality; there is no politics. There’s just people. People who need help. Let’s use this tragedy to sustain the inherent goodness of the human race.

Josh Sternberg is the owner/founder of Sternberg Strategic Communications, a firm that merges traditional and digital approaches to help clients get their messages to the right audiences. He also sits on an advisory board for Break The Cycle, a non-profit helps youth communities free from domestic violence. Josh has honed his professional communications skills at a couple of NYC firms. Follow him on Twitter at @josh_sternberg.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.