7.0 Earthquake Hits Haiti Hospital Collapses

[Melly53]

http://tinyurl.com/ykrml3r

A man pulled alive from the rubble of a building in Haiti's capital Monday may have been trapped since the January 12 quake that leveled much of the city, doctors reported.

The 28-year-old man, identified as Evan Muncie, was found in the wreckage of a market where he sold rice, his family told staff at a University of Miami field hospital. He suffered from extreme dehydration and malnutrition, but did not appear to have significant crushing injuries, the doctors said.

"He was emaciated. He hadn't had anything in quite some time. He had open wounds that were festering on both of his feet," said Dr. Mike Connelly, of the university's Project Medishare.

The people who brought him to the hospital said they found the man while digging out the marketplace, Connelly said.

The man told doctors that someone was bringing him water while he was trapped, but doctors told CNN that he sounded confused and at times appeared to believe he was still under the rubble. Connelly said the man must have had some water during the past month to have survived, but Connelly wasn't sure how he would have had access to it.

(More at link)

 

[Melly53]

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/news/22510275/detail.html

The search for an Atlanta woman missing in the rubble of last month's earthquake has come to a tragic end.Tuesday, officials on the island confirmed that they have found the body of Diane Caves.Caves worked for the Centers for Disease Control and was on temporary assignment to improve Haitian HIV/AIDS programs when the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on January 12. (more at link)

 

[songline]

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/news/22510275/detail.html

The search for an Atlanta woman missing in the rubble of last month's earthquake has come to a tragic end.Tuesday, officials on the island confirmed that they have found the body of Diane Caves.Caves worked for the Centers for Disease Control and was on temporary assignment to improve Haitian HIV/AIDS programs when the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on January 12. (more at link)

RIP Diane Caves.
Sad ending to a good woman.

 

[Melly53]

Haiti Hospitals Charging Victims; UN Angry :furious:

The United Nations has warned that it will cut off shipments of free medicine beginning immediately to any Haitian hospitals that it finds are charging patients. When the catastrophic earthquake struck Jan. 12, authorities immediately decided to make all medical care free. More than 200 international medical relief groups have sent in teams to help, and millions of dollars of donated medicine has been flown in.
U.N. officials told The Associated Press that about a dozen hospitals — both public and private — have begun charging patients for medicine. The officials said they could not immediately provide the names of the hospitals but said they were in several parts of the country, including Port-au-Prince. "The money is huge," said Christophe Rerat of the Pan American Health Organization, the U.N. health agency in the region. He said about $1 million worth of drugs have been sent from U.N. warehouses alone to Haitian hospitals in the past three weeks.

​

Hospitals don't need to charge patients to pay their staff, because Haitian Health Ministry employees are getting paid with donated money, Rerat added.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1962176,00.html#ixzz0f51XBkYm
​

 

[songline]

A man pulled alive from the rubble of a building in Haiti's capital Monday may have been trapped since the January 12 quake that leveled much of the city, doctors reported.

The 28-year-old man, identified as Evan Muncie, was found in the wreckage of a market where he sold rice, his family told staff at a University of Miami field hospital. He suffered from extreme dehydration and malnutrition, but did not appear to have significant crushing injuries, the doctors said.

"He was emaciated. He hadn't had anything in quite some time. He had open wounds that were festering on both of his feet," said Dr. Mike Connelly, of the university's Project Medishare.

The people who brought him to the hospital said they found the man while digging out the marketplace, Connelly said.

The man told doctors that someone was bringing him water while he was trapped, but doctors told CNN that he sounded confused and at times appeared to believe he was still under the rubble. Connelly said the man must have had some water during the past month to have survived, but Connelly wasn't sure how he would have had access to it.

(More at link)

Thank you Melly

What a great miracle... Thank God, One more made it.

And I have a feeling that we have another week or two for the possibility of yet another miracle.

 

[songline]

Haiti Hospitals Charging Victims; UN Angry :furious:

The United Nations has warned that it will cut off shipments of free medicine beginning immediately to any Haitian hospitals that it finds are charging patients. When the catastrophic earthquake struck Jan. 12, authorities immediately decided to make all medical care free. More than 200 international medical relief groups have sent in teams to help, and millions of dollars of donated medicine has been flown in.
U.N. officials told The Associated Press that about a dozen hospitals — both public and private — have begun charging patients for medicine. The officials said they could not immediately provide the names of the hospitals but said they were in several parts of the country, including Port-au-Prince. "The money is huge," said Christophe Rerat of the Pan American Health Organization, the U.N. health agency in the region. He said about $1 million worth of drugs have been sent from U.N. warehouses alone to Haitian hospitals in the past three weeks.

​

Hospitals don't need to charge patients to pay their staff, because Haitian Health Ministry employees are getting paid with donated money, Rerat added.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1962176,00.html#ixzz0f51XBkYm
​

WTF?
The medicine is coming free, the doctors are working free, the volunteers are working free, WHAT are they Haitians Charging the people for?
Talking about a corrupt government :waitasec:
I want my money back.... lol

 

[Patty G]

Body of missing student from university in South Florida found in Haiti

MIAMI (AP) — The body of a student from a south Florida university has been recovered a month after she was reported missing in Haiti's massive earthquake.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...ap-us-haiti-missing-americans,0,2694283.story

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1473654.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585444,00.html

 

[Melly53]

Body of missing student from university in South Florida found in Haiti

MIAMI (AP) — The body of a student from a south Florida university has been recovered a month after she was reported missing in Haiti's massive earthquake.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...ap-us-haiti-missing-americans,0,2694283.story

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1473654.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585444,00.html

The bodies of Christine Gianacaci and Courtney Hayes have been found and identified. I hope for the families sake that they can recover the other missing students now.

 

[noZme]

Haiti: Boots on the Ground Perspective ​

Colonel Buck Elton
(This is open via Creative Commons License so I will copy the entire blog here. Photos & other interesting articles on a variety of topics: http://smallwarsjournal.com/)

Buck Elton is the Commander of Joint Special Operations Air Component-Haiti. Small Wars Journal inadvertently received an e-mail update from Buck to his family and friends. SWJ asked if we could publish his insightful account and he most graciously agreed. What follows addresses many issues now appearing in the press – here is a boots on the ground perspective.

On Jan 13th I deployed with a few hours notice to Port au Prince to command a team of Air Commandos from Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field on a Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief mission in Haiti. We launched from Hurlburt within a few hours of notification without knowing what to expect at the airfield due to very limited communications with anyone in Haiti. We landed at 7 pm EST and had the Port au Prince airfield under our tactical air traffic control (ATC) 28 minutes later.
I am the commander of the Joint Special Operations Air Component-Haiti. I lead a force of 220 airmen (down to 164 now) executing ATC, airfield security, rescue, critical care evacuation, special operations surgical teams, aerial port duties, humanitarian airdrop surveys, planning, and DZ control, rotary wing ops command and control, communications specialists and logistics professionals. Most of us operated non-stop without sleep for the first 40 hours. We had no showers for the first 9 days; I slept 9 hours in the first 4 days. We are still eating only MREs, mosquitoes everywhere and absolute carnage outside of the wire. The stench of rotting bodies in the rubble makes driving in some areas difficult. Buildings are destroyed everywhere in the city and parts of the country. There are 59 confirmed and 37 reported (unconfirmed) US fatalities and up to 150,000 Haitian citizens reported dead or missing. Over $780M has been donated and another $1.2B has been pledged by the international community. 690K refugees occupy more
than 600 shelter villages because homes are destroyed or unsafe. Aftershocks occur daily, up to 5.0 and 6.0 in strength. The US Navy hospital ship Comfort is operating at maximum capacity and has all 1,200 racks filled with patients. The 2d Brigade Combat Team from 82d Airborne Division is here with soldiers to assist the UN and local police with food distribution and security.
Total DOD Boots on the Ground are over 5,000. The US Navy Carrier Carl Vinson is here with SH-60 and H-53 helicopters, and C2 aircraft flying day and night bringing aid to the airport. Two Marine Expeditionary Units are here, along with the Coast Guard and a small Air Force team now running the airfield. Rescue teams are still pulling survivors out of rubble, after being trapped for more than 12 days. Violence is remarkably low and the Haitian people are grateful, humble and very resilient. The Government of Haiti (GOH) is doing the difficult job of rebuilding, providing basic services and attempting to coordinate the massive amount of international aid flowing into the country. More than 30 nations and hundreds of NGOs are assisting the GOH. USAID is the lead agency for US humanitarian response in Haiti. ​

For
the first week, we were virtually the only people in country who had communications, food/water, transportation, tents and security. We completely ran the international airport with a small force normally organized, trained and equipped to command and control special operations air. But we became the focal point for the evacuation of 12,000 American citizens, the primary casualty evacuation center coordinating hundreds of evac flights, our surgeons performed 14 major operations in their field hospital, mostly amputations of crushed limbs, our security held back rioting crowds and fence jumpers for the first several days, our pararescue jumpers saved 13 lives conducting confined space rescue missions with Fairfax Country Urban Rescue, the best in the world. Our security teams flew aid in to crowded landing zones and secured the LZ to distribute aid. Our Special Tactics Combat Controllers controlled an international airport 24/7 from a card table in the grass next to the runway for 12 days without a single incident, controlled almost 1700 fixed wing flights and 800 rotary wing flights from the infield with tactical radios until we handed the job back to Air Force air traffic controllers in their portable FAA tower (with air conditioning) on 25 Jan. We coordinated and planned 3 airdrop missions from C-17 aircraft. Our Joint Special Operations Forces distributed 43,800 hand cranked radios to allow disaster survivors to receive news and information regarding international relief efforts and public safety messages. And we provided internet and phone service to virtually every arriving unit and aid organization that showed up here without a plan.

I was interviewed by Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Al Rocher, BBC, Reuters, French TV 24 and did two telecon interviews with 250 reporters. I coordinated directly with Senator John Edwards to arrange the evacuation of 28 critically injured Haitian citizens to Florida. John Travolta showed up in his Boeing 707 last night, but I went to bed and had a few airmen go get a picture with him. I briefed SECSTATE Hillary Clinton, former POTUS Bill Clinton, and more 3-4 star Generals than I can count. I had a problem with where we were taking US citizens and asked a National Security Council staffer to help me out. He emailed Janet Napolitano on his BlackBerry. She authorized me to move any US Citizen to any US location, overriding guidance I got from the Joint Staff and the US Air Force. I had to threaten an international flight crew that I would tow their 737 into the grass if they did not immediately depart the airfield (they had been on the ground for over 7 hours while aircraft were diverting due to no available parking) I told 50 reporters that if they didn't move their cars away from where an aeromedical evacuation flight was supposed to park I would bulldoze all the cars into the grass and off the ramp. I ordered the evacuation of 54 orphans on a C-17 against the specific direction of the American Consulate General here at the Embassy, but with the full support of the DHS, INS, NSC and ICE. I met with the Haitian Secretary of State for Agriculture and convinced him to allow airdrop resupply of humanitarian aid.
We took some heat at the airfield early on for the large number of diverts international flights were executing. Most aircraft were arriving without enough fuel to hold for a few hours, some with only a few minutes to hold before diverting for more fuel. We had 40-50 diverts a day for the first few days because there were no flow control measures to meter the number of aircraft that wanted to land here. The runway only has a single taxiway to the ramp and it is located at midfield. This makes it a single aircraft operation for takeoff, landing and taxi because all arriving and departing aircraft must use the runway to back taxi. The max aircraft on the ground is 12, but we only had enough material handling equipment to offload 3 at a time. The first night we hotwired a 6K forklift and provided the only means to offload military aircraft, until we flew down our own 10K forklift from Hurlburt. We had to hand off load a Chinese A330 because we didn’t have the proper equipment. It took over 8 hours and they blocked half of the ramp because their pilots wouldn’t taxi where we directed them to park. We pushed small civilian aircraft out of the way, threatened international aircraft with fines and threatened to tow aircraft into the grass unless they complied with our instructions. We were landing over 250 aircraft per day without phones, computers, or electricity and people were complaining about the log jam at the airport. ​

The Department of State DipNote blog has the best summary of the air traffic challenges we had. It is the transcript of a telecon interview I did with about 120 reporters from the Embassy here in Port au Prince. As a typical over reaction to the international "outrage" over not getting into the airport, the Air Force dramatically cut back capacity and has scheduled slot times well into late Feb. The AFSOC force has completely turned over control of the airfield operations to the USTRANSOM Contingency Response Group and the newly arriving Air Expeditionary Group. We are now landing just over a hundred aircraft a day, including small aircraft we park in the grass, and there are many times during the day and night when there are only a few aircraft on the ramp. We can do much better.

Our team of Air Commandos from Air Force Special Operations Command acted decisively and proved responsiveness, creativity, courage and competence can allow you to accomplish just about anything. I have many stories to tell, but not time to type them yet. We are wrapping up our Special Ops portion of this massive effort and should be heading home shortly, but you never know.

Buck
Col Buck Elton ​

Commander, Joint Special Operations Air Component - Haiti

 

[Melly53]

I came across a letter from a young Haitian today and wanted to share an excerpt from it because it just made me so angry learning that with all the aid in money, food and medicine pouring into Haiti that the corruption from officials continues at the expense of the people! :furious:

As you know, after the earthquake that caused hundreds thousands of deaths and injured and destroyed the country, everybody is in dire needs for food, water and housing. One thing I want to mention, all those donations and millions of dollars that have been raised in the name of Haiti, haven’t touched the majority of the needy people because there is not a good coordination of those aids, so everything is being done in a disorganized way. If we had to count on those donations, we could have died of hunger. The organizations that are in charge of the food and donations, they give cards to some personalities to distribute to the people so that they can come get food and other things, most of those cards are being sold or given away in a partial way, that’s to say if you don’t have someone in a position of control, it will be quasi-impossible for you to receive something. Last week, some people in Pétion-ville were in the streets to demonstrate because the mayor was selling the rice cards at 100 HT gourdes each, this is merely cruel!


If you wish to read more here is the link:

http://www.sharingjesus.org/

 

[PorcineGranny]

Melly, you know what I find amazing? That people who are in such a dire situation don't have compassion for others.

 

[Melly53]

This is just unbelievable!! :furious::furious::furious: The government of Haiti seems determined to shoot themselves in the foot in regards to all of the FREE donated goods that are being sent there from around the world. I would not be surprised to see organizations stop sending supplies if Haiti insists on continuing with this new policy of taxing donations.

http://tinyurl.com/olapr9a

Relief supplies had been flowing freely from the airport since the earthquake. Rescue workers had been able to avoid customs delays and taxes imposed on foreign imports. But now the whole system had been upended.

They showed us an order from the Ministry of Economy and Finance outlining a new procedure for getting supplies into the country. Organizations now have to sign over the goods to the Haitian Department of Civil Protection which will review their request to get a tax exemption before releasing the goods. We called the ministry and they told us the government is trying to prevent businesses from getting goods in tax free under the guise of being relief organizations. They are after crooks and people sneaking in contraband.

But Terry Nelson from Light Ministries said he was told the only way to get his tents is to pay the tax. "We're giving stuff away. We've been here for 28 years and we have to pay to help their people," he said. He did not know the cost. "I'm trying to find out," he said. We left him there waiting on 250 tents on a week it had started to rain.

Bill Manassero of Maison de Lumiere came to pick up 6 tons of donated goods and was told it could cost him as much as $10,000 unless he was willing to sign it over to the government and await approval.

No one trusted they would get their goods back.

The government says they have changed the rules because the "emergency situation" is now over.

I asked customs to explain why this new process is stalling relief work. "I just want to understand why people when they come to get their things have to pay so much money. Why a tax? It seems if you're donating things like tents or food they should just be donated. There's not one person in this building who can answer the question why tents can't be donated," I repeatedly asked the customs director. No answer. That's Haiti.
:furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious::furious:

IMO the corrupt government of Haiti is back in control!! I have seen too many stories lately of donated supplies mysteriously disappearing and stories of the food vouchers being sold or given only to certain favored people by the Haitian officials that are supposed to be overseeing their fair/equal distribution. This is an absolute outrage. Since Haiti is dependent on foreign governments and aid/relief organizations in help rebuilding, the U.N or someone needs to step in and STOP this NOW!!!

Haiti isn't just looking a gift horse in the mouth but is slapping it on both sides of its head, at the expense of their own people!!!! IMO Every news organization around the world needs to make this their top story and then perhaps they could embarrass the Haitian government into doing the RIGHT thing!! They are obviously not going to do it on their own.