Last Haiti Post for a while.
Yesterday I photographed dedicated utility crews working to restore power in Northern Virginia. The Mid-Atlantic rarely is slammed with heavy snows and this is the second of the season – both twenty plus inches. Another storm is workings its way across the country and I expect we will see between eight to ten inches by Wednesday morning.
Canadian Forces members who helped CCH transport a mobile operating room from Santa Domingo to Cayes Jacmel. Also shown is Karen Carr, Director of CCH and Knox Singelton, Chairman of Inova Health Systems and CCH board member.
I wanted to update everyone about the Community Coalition for Haiti impact so far. What has helped us is our long standing commitment to Haiti. Core members of our group have been traveling to Haiti to perform and assist Haitian medical professionals since the late eighties.
TO DATE CCH HAS:
Treated over 8,000 patients in PAP, Pignon, Jacmel, Cay Jacmel, and Leogane.
Shipped in 22 tons of medical supplies including a 16 ton mobile Operating Unit donated to CCH by a Swiss consortium.
Shipped in 2 tons of food and water, 1 ton of tents and tarps, with more cargo planes flying in this week ($1 provide 1 lb. of food directly to areas where 50-75% of the structures were damaged and people are living in tents cities to survive)
Sent in 7 medical teams (49 doctors and nurses) to some of the most devastated areas of Haiti including Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, Cay Jacmel, Pignon, and Leogane.
Organized the collection and distribution of medical supplies for the Southwest Department of Haiti in cooperation with the Haitian Health Minister of the Southwest
Established ambulatory care system fro patient transfer and treatment in the Jacmel region
Providing ongoing triage and primary care at Hospital Saint Michel in Jacmel
There is a good chance that I will return to Haiti in late February for a week. This will be a good one. We will travel to remote villages where I’ll shoot stills and video of Haitian patients, villages and our team.
Patients waiting for treatment at Hospital Saint Michelle.
On the road to Lavalee in the mountains near Jacmel.
Jacmel, Haiti #4 | The Smile
A glimpse of normalcy.
Jacmel, Haiti #3 | The Collapse
Hospital Saint Michelle | The Carry
Stretchers everywhere. People just arrived as if almost by stealth mode. Some come in with a rush of emotions. Others, like this young man, found on the ground and no one saw the people who brought him to the hospital.
The entrance to our makeshift primary care unit was blocked by an abandoned ambulance. This elderly woman was carried by these two men to a emergency room physician who saw her right away.
This man carried his mother away from the hospital. I don’t know if he was taking her to another facility or why.
The Haitian Scouts were essential in helping keep order and to provide a sense of security to the people. They were a constant presence at the hospital and often helped carry patients into or from our ward.
This young woman suffered a significant injury to her right hip. Erin, a doctor from the Delaware group that worked alongside the CCH team, set the splint and arranged for her to be triaged to Cayes Jacmel hospital.
Hospital Saint Michelle | Jacmel, Haiti
Hospital Saint Michelle in Jacmel. Three views of operating suites, destroyed buildings and children’s wards impacted by the January 12th earthquake.
Jacmel, Haiti #2
The Sisters of Salesia have a small school and convent near Jacmel. They graciously allowed us to camp on their grounds and use one of their school rooms as a medical depot. Every morning as I made tea, the sisters would sing their prayers in French. Their voices lifted in harmony as they sang the Lords Prayer. It helped keep me centered and on track for the day ahead. On evening, the Sisters turned on the radio and started dancing with several children from Port Au Prince. I joined in and shot as they danced around me.
Every morning when we arrived at St. Michelle Hospital in Jacmel there was several lines of patients waiting for the doctors to attend to their needs. The CCH team worked alongside physicians and nurses from Delaware and Cuba. CCH hired a fixer to coordinate translators and drivers. Mel Schorin, an Emergency room physician from Boston, who joined our trip because his brother works for Inova, wrote a Creole-English medical glossary that he distributed to the nurses and physicians. You can download it here.
When we were traveling between the three hospitals, I would often shoot people with my 18mm and fill-flash as we barreled down the bumps and dips of the dirt roads that connect all of Haiti. This man is carrying a load of sugar cane stalks.
Jacmel, Haiti #1
Downtown Jacmel. The San Francisco earthquake in 1989 was similar in scale and strength to the Haitian Earthquake in early January. Sixty-three people died in the San Francisco quake and over a hundred-thousand perished in southern Haiti. Why? Buildings in California are designed to withstand earthquakes and are built to strict codes. Haiti’s constant poverty means stretching your funds as far as possible. Their is very little oversight during construction and minimal building codes or inspectors to enforce them. Many of Haiti’s buildings pancaked because the concrete was stretched with too much sand. A concrete block in North America on average weighs eight times more than a standard Haitian building block. When the quake hit, the stressed concrete disintegrated.
Dr. Swati Agarwal, an Pediatric Critical Care physician for Inova Fairfax attending a young man who was beaten severely and left for dead on a Jacmel beach. He was carried into the courtyard and left on a stretcher. I found him and a young interpreter named Elvis summoned Larry Walker from Inova and another physician to carry him onto our makeshift tables, a collection of desks set-up in the courtyard underneath blue tarps to ward off the sun. The young man was severely dehydrated and suffered from multiple injuries.
Mass confusion reigns near the entrance to Hospital Saint Michelle in Jacmel. Bill Allard once said to find the place and wait for the moment. I sat on the steps of a church overlooking the entrance to the hospital and into a courtyard that swelled with doctors from CCH, plus Haitian-American nurses from New York City, a Cuban medical team and a group from Delaware. I shot a few frames and waited. I was looking for the moment when disorganization and chaos presented itself. Everyone was trying so hard: we were short on supplies, not enough time, hundreds of patients were lying in beds underneath makeshift tents and it all came together in a flurry that passed by in a few seconds.
The Washington Post embedded reporter Susie Kenzie with the first CCH team to enter Jacmel. They flew to Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic and drove from the DR to Pignon, Haiti and then flew into Jacmel. Her video was published on the Washington Post website.
Back from Haiti
An intense week of shooting along the southern coast of Haiti. I have barely touched the edit since arriving home late last night. The day began with a trip to the Canadian airfield in Jacmel and an MAF flight to Port au Prince. The helo schedule did not mesh up so I ended up spending the day on the Touissant Airport tarmac photographing cargo jets unloading and Americans trying to get home. At four-thirty I got on board a private jet headed to Ft. Lauderdale. We ran late and a few members of our team missed flights.
The first image was shot in downtown Jacmel. The second is in the courtyard which became the Community Coalition for Haiti primary care center.
More to come but I am exhausted. We spent a week tenting in a convent without a solid nights sleep and no food yesterday with little water. I am kinda wiped out.
A Gulls Eye View – Garden and Gun magazine
Garden and Gun – the wonderful southern magazine with photo editing by Maggie Kennedy is showing a preview of my Chesapeake aerial book.
Garden and Gun – A Gulls Eye View
I have been prepping all week in between shoots for my 11th trip to Haiti. I leave tomorrow morning with the Executive Director of the Community Coalition for Haiti – a faith based Medical mission that I am also a member of their board. This is our fourth team of medical professionals since last week. I am going to shoot in a small Childrens hospital in Port Au Prince and hope to make it over to Jacmel mid week.
I won’t have the opportunity to post to the blog but hope to add a few tweets. My twitter address is: http://www.twitter.com/camdavidson
Forty Seconds that changed Haiti
My love for Haiti started with my first trip in 1999. I’ve shot primarily for the Community Coalition for Haiti, a faith-based 501(c)3 NGO whose primary focus is working with and supporting a small hospital and several medical clinics in the North Central Plateau. I have been a member of the board since 2002. Last March was my tenth visit to Haiti and my first to the Southwestern peninsula.
Right now, we are trying to get several groups of surgeons into Port Au Prince and Jacmel. Today, I am working on arranging helicopter transport from the Dominican Republic for them.
This morning, CCH ran an ad in the Washington Post about our restricted fund that 100% of the money goes directly toward the earthquake relief effort. One obstacle is the staggering cost of flying in the surgeons and gear from Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic into Haiti.
If you are interested in contributing to the transportation efforts for our group, please visit our web site, CCHaiti.org
Air Calvary is a 501(c)3 New York based aviation group that helps transport Doctors and teams into crisis areas. They are good guys and are helping many groups with transport from the Dominican Republic into Haiti. The need contributions to help defray the costs of flights from the DR into Port Au Prince. At the moment, there are four secure landing zones in Port Au Prince. To contribute to Air Calvary’s efforts, please go to their site, AirCalvary.org.
I shot this image of the young boy was shot in a school in Central Haiti. This morning, the first appeal for contributions ran in the Washington Post Metro section.
