Notes from the field

Tonight I'm posting a field report from Steve Hailey passed on to me from Lois Clark-McCoy, President of the National Institute of Urban Search and Rescue.
Steve was the Emergency Services Director for American Red Cross in Austin TX.
He has over 50 Disaster Response assignments plus 6 international deployments.
His note below. He is currently working as a contractor (Technology and communications response) for a group of doctors from Orlando FL.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Hailey
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 11:00 PM

Just a quick update. I made it to Haiti and am supporting doctors at the main general hospital as well as an International Red Cross team who have setup a mobile hospital on the general hospital grounds to help with the overflow. Without going into all the gory details I guess I can only say that with all the disasters I've been on this is 1000 times worse. It is really bad here the people need help and I fear it will only get worse. I'm just glad I am able to help. My family is doing well back home thanks for asking.

Let me give you just few highlights from my first 24hrs.:

1. Flight over was a chartered jet and the air traffic control was so overloaded that my plane was not able to reach ground control at Port au Prince for nearly an hour and we had to basically fly in a circle to get them to recognize us. So we were flying by the seat of our pants. After landing I paid a local with a truck to haul people and personnel to the hospital and had him drive right up to the plane on the grass and didn't go through customs or anything. Very interesting.

2. Driving around is by far the most dangerous activity. You can get shot, a telephone pole came within feet of fallling on the car I was riding in. Note to self...stay off the street because its dangerous.

3. Now I know what wartime medicine is. Its dirty, nasty, and that is all I can say right now.

4. Provided comms for Intl. Red Cross Hosp. AND the main general hospital.

Not bad for the first 24 hours. I need to turn the genset off now take care and please pass this on if you wish.



I hope to post more field reports from various teams as more teams get up and running.
Kudos to the Israeli team for such quick and efficient hospital set up. Take note emergency response administrators, we could learn a thing or two.