Bed-Stuy’s Own Volunteer Ambulance Corps on the Ground in Haiti
January 23, 2010 by David Mark Greaves
Filed under Uncategorized
“First on the Scene” is the motto of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and they earned it when founders Rocky Robinson and Joe Perez were working without an ambulance running with oxygen tanks strapped to their backs in the organization’s fledgling days in 1988. And now in response to the Haiti earthquake, “Nobody expected us to even come close to what we have been able to do”, said an energized Rocky Robinson. “I woke up and I said I’ve trained thousands of paramedics and EMT’s and I sent out the word that we needed everybody who ever came through the BSVAC to come back now.”
It was through this network that a former member who knew Wyclef Jean told him what the BSVAC was doing, and through that connection and the Church of Scientology chartered a plane and 44 rapid-response volunteer medics, nurses and doctors left Kennedy Airport Saturday afternoon, landed at Port-au-Prince and went directly to the hospital where they cleaned the area and set up an emergency room. “They’ve set 300 fractures, delivered three babies and started IVs.”
Robinson says that hundreds of people are coming to join the Bed-Stuy Volunteer Ambulance Corps to help in this effort.
“We’re like Haiti”, Rocky said, “we’re the poorest volunteer ambulance corps but we know how to work with nothing.” And when it comes to providing relief in Haiti, “We do more with a penny than others do with a dollar.”
“People are lying on the bricks right now,” says Robinson and BSVAC is putting “the help where the hurt is. The Red Cross does good work, but we’re the Black Cross and every second counts.”
Lifesaving flights like these can take off on faith but they need money for medical supplies, food and water. Donations can be made at www.bsvac.org .
David Mark Greaves
A Night on Rue Berne:Living on the Streets
January 16, 2010 by admin
Filed under Top Stories
PORT-AU-PRINCE – Dusk had barely set and already, the residents of Rue Berne, were making their beds. These bedrooms were makeshift and arranged neatly on one side of the streets, away from shaky walls and fragile home frames that remain so dangerous.
The men erected barricades, leaving enough room for a vehicle to navigate the tiny canyon. Soon they share whatever they had, pasta or rice with smoke herring. A few hours later, mothers tucked their children in near their belly and they started to listen to the news on battery-operated transistor radios and by 8 P.M, some people had already begun falling asleep.
“You see what we’ve become, “ said Herold Joseph, who was born and raised in this longtime middle-class enclave. “The streets have become our home, no different from the stray dogs that we used to chase with sticks and stones.”
Joseph’s house, a squat tin-roof-covered house now sits feeble like every other home in Rue Berne, victim of a fierce earthquake that almost totally destroyed this capital city. In its wake millions have been displaced, their lives forever changed.
The death toll so far has reached 50,000 people, but the misery index remains countless and will never be fully-known. Millions of people completely lost their homes and other houses are too unsafe for people to venture inside, rendering this city a giant homeless shelter.
The scene at Rue Berne was similar in every block in every neighborhood of this capital city, wringed by gentle mountains. In many ways, those in Rue Berne are better off than many. Those who cannot sleep among friends in the streets, have sought shelter in courtyards of various government buildings such as the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Television Network, known as by its French acronym, TNH.
In the TNH yard, people brought their mattresses or rags to sleep on as the station produces its live coverage of the calamity.
“We’ve been the best in terms of television coverage,” said Pradel Henriques, TNH general director. “You have to remember the rest of the country, particularly the area north of Port-au-Prince do have electricity and we’re the only station that covers the entire nation.”
Henriques said that he was worried that he may not be able to continue his coverage because equipment was being strained and broke down, and he was running out of tape.
But unlike on Rue Berne, these dwellers are permanent with nowhere to go during day time. It is their home. As the few hospitals still functioning, are overwhelmed with bodies, these government yards have been turned into makeshift health centers. Foreign doctors and their Haitian counterparts, deliver babies – most of them born prematurely, induced from the shock their mothers suffered.
The doctors stitch wounds and make cast to mend broken bones.
“It’s very sad, “ said Fernando Gomez, a Dominican physician who sought permission from Henriques to remove an expectant mother from the yard to the Dominican border to deliver the baby by Ceasarian section. “We’re just glad we can help our neighbors during this tragedy. “
Dr. Gomez said he has worked almost non-stop going from government offices to health centers to treat the injured.
“We do the best we can,” he said.
Though this was a natural disaster, man has played a large role in the calamity. For nearly four decades, Port-au-Prince, once a bucolic town of professionals, has grown into a giant slum with haphazard construction and makeshift neighborhoods.
The degradation began in the early 1960’s when dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier began bringing busloads of peasants from the countryside to come and sing his praises when the shunned leader had foreign dignitaries visiting his country. But the sinister Duvalier gave them a one-way ticket and seduced by the lights of the big city, the country dwellers stayed and abandoned their farms.
One such creation is the infamous Cite Soleil.
Once there, they erected tin shacks and above poorly-built cement with no sewer lines or electrical grid.
Over the years, Port-au-Prince, a city built to handle 200,000 residents, mushroomed to nearly 2 million. That number is an estimate because there hasn’t been a Census taken in nearly three decades.
“I’ve been saying this for years,” said Dr. Mathurin, a geologist. “But I didn’t have the proper pedigree and so I wasn’t taken seriously.”
Dr. Mathurin, while being interviewed on Radio Signal FM, said that a Purdue University study had pinpointed this earthquake within a week of its touchdown in Haiti.
He also said that in a way, Haiti was lucky because two earthquakes hit Haiti but their path crossed, limiting the impact.
“We were lucky we got the aftershocks instead of the other earthquake that was to follow.”
As the dawn was settling in, residents gathered their makeshifts bedrooms and quickly whisked them in their courtyards and cleared the streets. They bathe, wash their teeth and try to live a normal life.
“It’s going to be a long time,” said Joseph, when asked how long he was going to live on the streets. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
He and a group of men head off to survey the damages as if heading to work. But their task is to look at the debris and destruction that have become their beloved city.
En Route to Witness what is Perhaps the Worst Natural Disaster in this Hemisphere
January 16, 2010 by admin
Filed under Top Stories
by Rachel Pratt and Garry Pierre-Pierre (http://www.haitiantimes.com/)
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – A few days after a disastrous earthquake rocked Haiti to its core, many Haitians in the tri-state area, boarded planes to Santo Domingo in hope of reaching their troubled country through the land border. The team of Haitian Times correspondent ran into about a dozen Haitian New Yorkers at Kennedy International airport.
When asked why they were going to Haiti, all of them said they were frustrated at having no news from their relatives and friends in Haiti. Communication in Haiti remains sparse and the suspense was too much to bear. They boarded these planes not even sure whether they would make it to Haiti. At least, they reason, they were in Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Everyone encountered, was in a state of shock and felt a sense of helplessness not being able to contact and know if their loved ones were alive. Seeing the mainstream media providing limited visibility of the devastation, their neighborhoods, it was beginning to frustrate people. But by making a move… trying to get to Haiti, finally made them feel as though they are making a difference. They are no longer stuck in front of the TV being fed repetitive information. They have control. They will be able to see the true devastation for themselves.
One of the people traveling with us, a well-known Haitian surgeon Dr. Lesly Guerrier, is also feeling the sense of urgency. To quickly do something and take care of his family and put his skills to help his people. His parents who took time to build their dream retirement home in Haiti, lost their home at the age of 80 years old…they lost their life long dream, their happiness. Now his plan is to get his parents out of the country as soon as possible to a safe area. Unfortunately, in Haiti you build your home on your own risk. Hurricanes, tornadoes, tropical storms are the norm but this is now unexpected territory.
Indeed, when we reached Santo Domingo, getting into Haiti was not easy. Haiti’s battered airport was closed only to rescue mission and even some of them had to travel by car to Haiti. At the municipal airport here, scores of passengers had to make alternative plans to get to Haiti. We rented an SUV and got a driver to take us in a van.
We went to a Costco in Santo Domingo and bought food and water, sleeping bags and flashlights ready to tackle on the elements on the ground, which remain a mystery to all of us. We don’t know what awaits us but we’re off to the border. (For updates, visit. http://www.haitiantimes.com
Community Unites in Support of Caribbean Nation
January 16, 2010 by David Mark Greaves
Filed under featured
“You are Not Alone”
“This is one of the great tragedies to befall any country,” said Mayor Bloomberg of the earthquake registering a magnitude 7.0 on the Richter Scale at 4:39pm local time southwest of Port Au Prince.
“And the fact that it happened to a country so close to the United States, and particularly close to this city, it’s incumbent upon us to pull together.” Bloomberg joined by Gov. David Paterson, Borough President Marty Markowitz and many other city leaders at the Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn’s Flatbush section yesterday, also spoke of how the search and rescue teams and other city resources were ready to be deployed and that efforts were being coordinated on the federal level, as well.
“What is needed on the ground right now is communications,” said the mayor, a statement echoed by everyone who spoke. “The already fragile infrastructure of Haiti has been decimated, and there is no meaningful communication capability left.”
The scale of destruction is such that basic infrastructure has to be first put in place, before many aid personell can be put on the ground. “The magnitude is such that it will be the United States government and the United Nations with the capability to bring assistance,” said the mayor. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, trying to convey the kind of devastation Haiti has been struck with, a nation that is known for its poverty, shanties, mud slides, hurricanes and coups. “The palace is a very, very substantial building, and the fact that this building collapsed, to think that it crumbled, goes to show you the magnitude of this earthquake.”
Kelly was speaking at a large press conference held at Holy Cross Church in Brooklyn, the spiritual home for “The largest population of Haitians outside of Haiti” according to a conversation that Borough President Marty Markowitz said he had with several members of the Haiti government.
“Brooklynites will be there big time with their checkbooks open,” said Markowitz. “And all the nations of the world, China, Russia, Korea, Japan, should all come together over this tragedy and invest the money necessary to help Haiti overcome this problem.”
“A community that is a part of the great fabric of New York, and today a community that is a part of the great collective prayer of New Yorkers,” is in dire straits said Governor David Paterson. The state is poised to help but “there is an unavailability of communications.” Paterson announced that “Deputy Secretary for Public Safety Denise O’Donnell is creating a registry of New Yorkers known to be in Haiti, so that we can as quickly as possible notify their families of their whereabouts and hopefully, safety.”
All spoke of the need for financial donations, rather than food or clothing. “The ports are closed” there is no communication and the best thing is to give the agencies the money for the flexibility to act where the need can be met. Stressed also was to be watchful for scams and to always give to known relief agencies. Those mentioned were UNICEF, American Red Cross, and Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti. go to http://yele.org to make a donation.
“This will be a consistent and lasting effort during this very difficult time for the people who live in that area,” said the governor. “I want to pledge all the resources of the state” for the relief effort that is being mounted for Haiti. “New Yorkers should know that New York has coalesced in a fight to help those, as they helped us, just a little over 8 years ago, when we had our city confronted by tragedy.”
Councilman Matthew Eugene, the first memberof the Haitian community to serve on the City Council said he sent “My prayers to my brothers and sisters” and “thank you to all my colleagues in government for the support for the Haitian community.” Eugene spoke about people calling his office at 2am, not knowing what had happened to their family members. “I want to say to the people of Haiti, You are not alone. You have friends working together as one team, the United States team, to send relief and assistance to you.”
(Follow up-to-date reports at http://www.haitiantimes.com/
