Haiti Earthquake MAF Response

Personal Reports from MAF Staff in Haiti (updated Jan. 29)

MAF remains at the center of international rescue, relief and recovery efforts following the Jan. 12 earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince. The following are first-hand accounts from the front lines:

John Woodberry, MAF Disaster Response/Security Manager:

• Jan. 15: We received a call to go to the airport to receive aid workers, but ran into a traffic jam on a primary thoroughfare. We detoured on an unfamiliar side street, which forked. I was about to go left when a motorcycle passed me. Its rider wore a white medical mask against the stench of death over Port-au-Prince. He waved me to go right instead. I followed him through a complex maze of back hill roads. He kept looking back to make sure we could see him. Finally we came to a familiar road clear all the rest of the way to the airport. He stopped, and I waved my thanks. He simply waved back…an angel?
• Jan. 18: The Lord allowed 26 Haitian children from the Three Angels Orphanage to come home to their American and Canadian families. Abbey McArthur, director of Homeschooling at Three Angels, rescued the children and accompanied them on a Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR team aircraft donated in partnership with Missionary Flights International (MFI). MAF coordinated logistics for the MFI flight which carried the orphans to their new families. The adoptive parents had waited and prayed for six hours after the quake to hear whether their children had survived. Some had waited three years for Haitian government paperwork to release them to their new families. Monday morning the parents learned that the Haitian government had approved the adoptions. Through a series of miracles, including free chartered jet flights, most of the parents arrived outside of U.S. Customs in Fort Pierce in time to receive their children. By just after midnight the last set of available parents received their little one.
• Jan. 20: We started early with MAF facilitating its first C130 flight at the general aviation ramp of the Port-au-Prince airport. The MAF crew unloaded 46,000 pounds of urgent cargo in one hour. The forklift itself was flown in for our use on the aircraft and will be used tomorrow on the 6 a.m. DC4 arrival. The cargo of food, medicines, wheelchairs, and other vitally needed equipment is right outside the MAF hangar. MAF has been asked to make sure the cargo goes where is it is needed. A doctor/surgeon team we had transported on an MAF plane a few days ago came by as their hospital had run out of supplies. We helped them load relief we had just received into two trucks for the hospital. We also distributed food and tents to an orphanage with 140 children living outside.
• Jan. 21: The grassy field in front of MAF’s hangar has been a hive of activity as our facility is the center of operations for receiving and coordinating delivery to many missions and aid organizations. Relief continues at a rapid pace. At 7 a.m. we unloaded our first DC-4 with some 30,000 pounds of medicines, food, and other relief cargo. At the end of the day, our grass is almost empty, signifying that life-saving food and medicine is being supplied to hundreds of thousands of desperate Haitians. Cargo from a C130, a DC4, and a Cessna Caravan has been delivered to orphanages, hospitals, and a mission station, all of which had run out of supplies.
  
  As I write this at 11p.m., our forklift remains in constant use. It has not stopped hauling medical cargo for Operation Blessing, covering the grassy field in pallets loaded with provision for starving Haitians. MAF coordinated 16 flights and around 130 passengers today.
• Jan. 25: We carried around 200 total passengers today and handled 35,000 lbs of cargo. Meanwhile the military took 150,000 pounds on more than 100 pallets with MAF painted on all sides to Miami, where it will be loaded on a freighter. Much of it is undesignated so MAF will have cargo to help distribute. Hopefully it will arrive in the next few days.
• Jan. 26: MAF was mentioned in an article posted on ESPN.com. Hendrick Motorsports, which owns the top three teams in NASCAR, donated use of three private aircraft that rotate in teams of two, flying relief personnel and supplies between Haiti and Fort Pierce, Florida. The Hendrick aircraft have run this shuttle since shortly after the Jan. 12 earthquake. The article notes that MAF has provided ground and logistical assistance in the earthquake rescue, relief and recovery.

Will White, MAF pilot:

• Jan. 20: Eight missionary doctors were stranded in Les Cayes, Haiti. On Jan., 19, Mark Williams and I flew in two MAF planes to pick them up. A Hawker 900 was coming to Haiti to evacuate them. Via satellite phone I informed the Hawker their passengers were safely in Port-au-Prince. They were overjoyed with the service MAF provided them.
• Jan. 21: MAF released to missionaries Bill and Marylin Fair emergency food and supplies brought into Haiti via Missionary Flights International. Here’s what they wrote us:

"We were able to get supplies from MAF/MFI and gave them to the hungry Haitians. Among provisions we delivered were six boxes of food to a woman we know, to deliver to her friends. She started crying: 'You are a blessing! Beni swa etenel!' Praise the Lord!"

"Thanks to MAF and MFI for working such long hours together. Because of their dedicated work, we are able to get food, supplies and tents to people who have lost their homes or cannot find food. We appreciate the hard work in getting us back home to Haiti so we can help the Haitian people. Once again we thank you very much, MAF, for all you are doing."

• Jan. 21: I was able today to fly more than 2,000 pounds of food to the island of La Gonave. Because La Gonave receives its food supply at the beginning of the week from Port au Prince, these 100,000 islanders have been cut off from food for the past week.
• Jan. 21: A mission group that evacuated most of its workers following the quake contacted me from the United States about getting food to their people. I flew two plane loads of MFI relief to them. While it was enough for his staff, it was not enough for the more than 400 people in his churches. The food was accepted at the landing strip by the ministry group WISH, which will distribute it.
• Jan. 22: This morning MAF was to take a team of doctors to Pignon, but last night someone called to cancel the flight. I told the doctors who showed up today at about 9 a.m. that they would have to wait until after a previously scheduled flight to Lagonave, an island northwest of Port-au-Prince, with a film crew and food supplies. We flew back with a team that was inspecting the Wesleyan hospital for earthquake damage.
  
  When we arrived at Port-au-Prince, mission director Dan Irvine said he had with him a 9-year-old girl whose feet had been crushed in the earthquake. Her feet looked like "ground beef," and if infection set in, it would be quickly fatal. The island hospital had done all they could. They needed to find an orthopedic doctor in Port-au-Prince for surgery. I agreed to wait for her at the plane.
  
  But knowing the huge strain on the field hospitals in Port-au-Prince, however, I was not hopeful of finding an ortho unit to operate on the girl. While flying back with her and Dan, I thought about the doctors waiting for me in Port-au-Prince. Hadn't they said they were orthopedic surgeons?
  
  I taxied the plane to my parking place where ALL of the doctors were standing with their supplies. I introduced Dan to the physicians.
  
  In no time the medical team was examining the girl and making plans to take her directly to the Pignon hospital. We removed her from the plane to fuel. The doctors were able to start an IV and examine her more before I flew three doctors, the girl and her mother to Pignon. I asked the medical team to let me know how the surgery went and to follow up about her.
  
  It was so exciting to see how God worked the events of the day to bring these two groups together. I was humbled to be a part of it.
• Jan. 22: Today Mark Williams walked by a police woman we knew. Yesterday I had given her a tent. Mark said to her, "Take me to jail so I can get some rest." She replied, "NO, pa bon pou peyi sa." (“That would not be good for this country.”)
• Jan. 23: Today we flew the C-206 and C-207 to Jacmel to pick up doctors and medical workers whom we transported to Port au Prince. We shuttled medical workers fresh in country from Port au Prince to the hospital in Pignon.
  
  The exciting news is that the KODIAK has arrived in Haiti. We unloaded the plane’s cargo that included the two boxes of supplies collected by a child in Nampa who had been adopted from a Haitian orphanage four years ago.
  
  The KODIAK was quickly put to work as an air ambulance. Behind our hangar is a large field hospital run by the University of Miami. A doctor there asked me if we could transport passengers. The doctors I had just flown to the Pignon hospital had told me they could do surgery on closed fractures. Meanwhile, the doctors at the field hospital specifically said they needed a place to send people that could do closed-fracture surgery.
  
  Immediately we loaded earthquake victims who needed surgery into the KODIAK and flew them to the Pignon hospital. We may be transporting more people to Pignon soon.
• Jan. 23: Today the KODIAK made a triangle flight to Jacmel to drop off two people for MedAir and a mission group with cargo to Lagonave. Earlier today I was contacted by Danita Estrella, who runs Danita's Children in Ouanaminthe (www.danitaschildren.org). She was in Port-au-Prince visiting collapsed orphanages collecting children she could transport to her place in Northeastern Haiti. She said three children could not go with the rest by road. One young boy had just had a metal plate put in his leg (both of his parents were killed in the earthquake), a young girl had an amputated right arm, and a boy had an amputated left leg. We loaded the kids and two workers and took off for Ouanaminthe. Upon arriving in OAN, there was a large crowd and several staff from Danita's Children to receive the children. They are now in good hands in a Christian environment. Without MAF the children would have had a very difficult and painful overland trip, bumping across the unimproved roads of Haiti for several hours.

Mark Williams, Program Manager - MAF Haiti:

• Jan. 20: Our missing Haitian MAF worker is presumed dead. The others have been accounted for. I gave them money and food. Two left to join family who live in the countryside. Four Haitian MAF workers are coming to the airport to help out.

From the MAF communications team:

• Jan. 19: We received an urgent appeal from the UN Disaster Assistance and Coordination (UNDAC) for use of MAF’s inflatable GATR VSAT communications system to aid Search and Rescue (SAR) groups. In response, the GATR system was relocated.
  
  Among groups the GATR is assisting is Instead, which receives SMS messages from Haitians and aid workers in the streets. These messages are encoded onto electronic maps for UNDAC, which sends relief or SAR teams. Also using the GATR is MapAction, a team that creates maps during emergencies to help coordinate relief efforts. MapAction’s high-resolution imagery is too large for the group’s own VSAT to handle efficiently, so they requested extra bandwidth through the MAF GATR. Maps show where SAR teams have already cleared buildings, as well as field medical hospital locations, collapsed bridges and obstructed roads. MapAction daily distributes maps pinpointing vital areas of need, to relief groups.
• Jan. 20: The GATR is up and running at the UNDAC area where satellite images are guiding plans for the transition from rescue to relief. We plan on being stationed in the UN compound for several days until the UN’s own systems can be flown in. We hope we can then move back to the World Concern office to assist with the "internet cafe" for other NGOs. An additional GATR is set to arrive.
• Jan. 20: While setting up the GATR communications system, our MapAction contact came by, distraught. One of his staff members who had previously worked at an orphanage just learned the orphanage building had collapsed, killing everyone inside.

David Darg, Director of International Disaster Relief, Operation Blessing:

• Jan. 18: Our base is at the Mission Aviation Fellowship hangar at the Port-au-Prince airport. MAF’s Disaster Relief Director John Woodberry has kindly allowed Operation Blessing to set up tents and use their infrastructure, including water and electricity. Without their partnership, we wouldn’t be so well positioned to respond and save lives. John has coordinated relief flights of essential medicines used by our doctors to treat victims.
• Jan. 18: This morning our team left the airport for an OB clinic set up at the soccer stadium. Each time we exit the airport we find more people desperate for help gathered at the gates. Port-au-Prince’s narrow streets are strewn with crushed cars and collapsed buildings. On our way we encountered a tree branch roadblock manned by Haitians desperate for food. Our interpreter explained we only had medical supplies. The Haitians pulled back the branches and allowed us to proceed.

Karen H. Carr, Director of Community Coalition for Haiti:

• Jan. 21: With the help of MAF, CCH's trauma team and medical supplies are in Jacmel helping heal the injured, hurt and hopeless. MAF has been a constant source of hope for all of the relief organizations trying to get supplies and medical personnel into Haiti. For the Haitians who are suffering and those bringing help, hearing the MAF flights overhead gives us more reason to believe that things will recover here and that more help is on the way. Without MAF, our ministry here to those in need in Jesus' name would not be possible. For the lives that have been saved, we owe MAF an eternal debt of gratitude. For those who will hear and see Jesus touching them through our medical volunteers and MAF's efforts, our appreciation on their behalf is infinite.

MAF Sends New KODIAK Aircraft, Crew to Haiti Relief Effort

NAMPA, Idaho – MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) has deployed a new KODIAK airplane and four crew members to join its fleet of three aircraft already serving the relief effort following the massive earthquake in Haiti Jan. 12.

The deployment marks the first-ever use of this specially designed airplane in disaster relief work.

Following a brief dedication ceremony yesterday afternoon, the KODIAK took off on its 3,000-mile, 18-hour flight to Haiti.

The KODIAK, which can carry more cargo and passengers than the Cessna planes currently in use in Haiti, will support the MAF relief efforts. The KODIAK runs on jet fuel, which is more readily available than costly aviation gasoline, or "avgas," which fuels Cessnas and is in short supply in Haiti.

"The KODIAK is the next-generation bush plane and is made for such a time as this," said John Boyd, president of MAF. "It can land on short, unpaved airstrips to get essential humanitarian help to its destination quickly and safely in the absence of viable roads. The KODIAK will greatly expand our ability to quickly take aid where it is most needed."

This deployment of its finest aircraft is the latest MAF response to the tragedy that has claimed some 200,000 lives and damaged most of the buildings in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

Disaster response has been an MAF area of expertise for more than 60 years. In past disasters, including the Indonesian Tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Felix and Cyclone Sidr in 2007, and the Haitian hurricanes of 2008, MAF provided communications systems, delivered relief supplies, transported medical teams and assisted humanitarian organizations in reaching people and areas that had been otherwise cut off from assistance.

MAF flights bring desperately needed relief supplies to outlying towns and return to Port-au-Prince with expatriates who had been working in Haiti before the earthquake and are evacuating the country.

MAF, which has been serving in Haiti for 23 years, has set up a Port-au-Prince communications center connected to a GATR VSAT satellite system, supplying direly needed high-bandwidth communications to workers from at least 16 international aid groups. The ministry is also helping coordinate the arrival and distribution of relief through its hangar at the airport. This service is valuable to relief organization as MAF staff know the country, the culture and the language.

"With the help of MAF, CCH's trauma team and medical supplies are in Jacmel helping heal the injured, hurt and hopeless," said Karen H. Carr, director of Community Coalition for Haiti. “MAF has been a constant source of hope for all of the relief organizations trying to get supplies and medical personnel into Haiti. For the Haitians who are suffering and those bringing help, hearing the MAF flights overhead gives us more reason to believe that things will recover here and that more help is on the way.

"Without MAF, our ministry here to those in need in Jesus' name would not be possible," Carr said. "For the lives that have been saved, we owe MAF an eternal debt of gratitude. For those who will hear and see Jesus touching them through our medical volunteers and MAF's efforts, our appreciation on their behalf is infinite."

The cargo aboard the KODIAK included two boxes of aid collected by 9-year-old Moise Salois of Nampa, Idaho. Young Moise, adopted from an orphanage in Haiti four years ago, still has two brothers and a grandmother living in Haiti. Among items Moise sent to Haiti on the MAF flight were medical supplies, infant formula, food and clothing.

Additionally, MAF is partnering with Hands of Hope and World Concern to provide relief supplies to Haiti. Among items collected for distribution in Haiti are food such as Power Bars, peanut butter and cooking oil; medical supplies including surgical gloves and orthopedic braces and splints; and other supplies such as blankets, solar-powered flashlights, large tarps, nylon rope and bungee cords.

This aircraft is the fourth MAF KODIAK. Three others are already serving overseas in remote areas.

The KODIAK is manufactured by Quest Aircraft Co. of Sandpoint, Idaho, which was founded to provide rugged, backcountry aircraft for remote operations for mission aviation organizations around the world.

Over the next few years, MAF will place 18 KODIAKS into service, replacing many of its Cessna 206s. Because this revolutionary aircraft can carry nearly twice the cargo of the Cessna 206, which makes up most of MAF’s fleet, the amount of medicine, food and disaster relief supplies MAF delivers at half the cost per cargo pound.

Haiti Updates: MAF Aiding Relief Effort

11:20 (MST), Monday, 18 Jan 2010

• MAF completed an operational flight on Saturday and has started operations again. We are flying people out of the countryside who have been stuck without connections to the city. Most of the work will be evacuating the city of Jacmel which has been hit hard by the earthquake as well.
• David Hoffman, formerly in MAF’s IT Department, arrived yesterday in PAP Port Au Prince and set up the GATR ball (portable, inflatable satellite antenna) Internet connection this morning – it is working well (I can p ersonally attest that it is due to the in creased email from Haiti!!)

  

• Rick Dickson, MAF’s Latin America n Regional Director, left Ft. Pierce, FL this morning for PAP and will continue to help John Woodberry and the four remaining Haiti staff members wi t h the logistical work at our hangar.
• The Haiti staff that has withdrawn are leaving South Florida today and heading to their respective home ar eas.
• One of our workers left today to help maintain the GATR ball – David Hoffman must leave Haiti on Thursday.
• Please continue to pray for the folks planning the continued effort and for how we need to plan the rotation of the crew.

12:32 (MST), Sunday, 17 Jan 2010

Update from Phyllis Schmid of MAF-LT partner ministry STEP

We just finished a worship service in our yard. Jacques Louis spoke and a number came forward for salvation. A time of singing, praying and rejoicing in God’s provision of protection.

Helicopters are flying directly over us (over a dozen in the last 5 minutes – now I’ve lost count) and we wonder if it is to verify where we and all these people are for delivery of aid.

Cell phones are beginning to work again. Digicel even put 200 gourdes (divide by 40) worth of minutes on all Digicel phones. This will help with people under buildings to be able to use their phones if they are still alive.

The night of the quake we actually rescued one student after hours of work and he was alive and not too severely injured. I don’t think I ever explained that before. It was truly a miracle. Cindy and I had the job of using flashlights to watch for the building to begin to move to let David and Bruce and the other workers know when something else might fall. That same night when I was hurrying up to our home to get something David needed I fell on a cement wall and fell off to a grass landing. I am scraped and bruised but NOTHING broken – a miracle. I’m trying to learn to walk slowly but it is hard when someone needs something. One of our missionary moms, Susie Day, had the home she was in fall in around her. She managed to pull herself out of the wreckage. Her survival is another miracle.

I have a group of about 12 men, David, Bruce, Wawa, Jacques and young men from the area who are meeting together to form plan of action. God is so good and people are trying as best they can to pull themselves together.

Some have asked about Pastor Dirogene. He and his family are safe, they home is safe but their church has damage.

Not everyone received my news last night that David, Bruce and Cindy (DBC) got back after many hours out on the roads. They made some good contacts, got some medical supplies, found Jehu and boys all alive and delivered some food to them. They saw many horrors and it was hard for them. Jehu and one of the older boys were inside the house but were able to get it. It is destroyed. This is the house they have been renting. Someone went out to check on the new building outside of town and it seems to be fine except for some of the walls on the top level that didn’t have the roof done on them yet.

We never did find another student under the rubble so now we feel everyone is accounted for. The night of the quake classes had just let out and people were leaving the building to go to the newer STEP building for chapel and the missions conference. The presidents of the classes took a census and knew there were three missing from that classroom (original chapel in old building). We assume the student unaccounted for perhaps was just not here that night. We have not heard that but he is not under the rubble.

Each day we learn of friends who have lost husbands, wives, children, other family members. For those that knew the Lord we can see that even through the grieving a peace eventually replaces the terror as they know where their loved ones are.

This is experience has changed me in ways I can’t even put into words. It is amazing to sense God’s presence, grace and strength in spite of our own personal weaknesses.

We will be digging another latrine only closer to our homes to use. Kinda like our first days in Haiti 34 years ago. Actually I’ll grateful to have it available.

Cindy is going to help me wash my hair this afternoon sometime just using the smallest amount of water possible. It is amazing what you can get used to.

We are changing our generator hours to cover the nights instead of days to help with security.

We felt another aftershock as we sat on our cement wall during the worship service.

I can’t think of anything else right now so will close with grateful hearts to God and to each and everyone who is praying for us and all those around us. The things to be learned from this experience can’t be measured.

Cindy and I are so grateful our internet continued to work so we could contact our families that first night. It would have been so hard for them and you all to be in the “dark” about what was happening here. The internet dish was a good investment and because we had to replace our breezeway and depot roof we had a stable place to put it.

09:58 (MST), Friday, 15 Jan 2010

For a heartfelt and well-written account of conditions on the ground in Haiti, see Wilhelmina Krul’s blog: http://mafkrul.blogspot.com . She has chronicled her family’s experience serving in Haiti, but she has focused her latest entries on the earthquake on Tuesday, January 12 and the aftermath that she, Jason, and other MAF families have experienced.