A volunteer's Haiti tale: Devastation everywhere, but hope remains

Mike Jensen was in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. He was in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. But nothing prepared him for what he saw when the sun came up Monday morning in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

 Mike Jensen (lower left) and other volunteers

Residents of the capital city of more than two million cried and prayed, their hands bloody from digging through rubble as they searched for loved ones. Bodies, some partially charred, lay beside roads. Hungry and thirsty, crowds massed at the airport gate hoping for some of the food, water and medical supplies coming in on transport planes.

Everywhere there was devastation.

"It looked like those pictures of WWII after Warsaw was bombed, just piles and piles of rubble," said Jensen, a long-time Heart to Heart International volunteer.

Jensen was among early Heart to Heart volunteers who made their way into Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake that left more than 70,000 dead and millions homeless. A roofing contractor in his everyday life, Jensen helps support the medical teams and - when not handling logistics - acts as Heart to Heart's photographer on the ground.

Words, and even photos, can't truly describe the devastation, Jensen said.

 

"You're overwhelmed emotionally from the human aspect, and then when you get downtown you start to see the piles of rubble and seven-story buildings that are only 12 foot tall now, and you know those were full of people," Jensen said. "The smell of decomposing bodies, the wailing, even gunshots in the distance, It was sensory overload."

Jensen spent long days supporting the medical teams, ferrying supplies, and shooting photos. The devastation - seven-story buildings collapsed across roadways, impromptu tent cities covering side streets and alternate routes - made the logistics of those tasks difficult.

And Jensen came across heartbreaking stories along the way, like that told by an 18-year-old girl who left her school, College Marie Anne, at 3:30 p.m. When she returned later Jan. 12, she found the school in ruins. Run by the Sisters of St. Anne, the teenager said more than 3,000 students ages 6 to 18 attended. While students were out of the school, some teachers still are missing.

On the ground in Haiti, Heart to Heart medical teams set up emergency medical facilities wherever they could - sometimes in undamaged buildings, at other times in tents. Injuries range from aches and pains to those far more serious.

"People were being brought into the clinic who had gangrene for four or five days."

Medical teams set up mobile units in areas outside the city. In those areas, Jensen said, friends and relatives transported the injured by motorcycle, in wheelbarrows or on makeshift stretchers they pulled behind them.

As of Thursday, Heart to Heart had sent about $5 million in aid - and countless volunteer hours - into Haiti.

It's rewarding but tough work, Jensen said.

"You have to bottle your emotions up when you see something like a corpse in the intersection, half burned because someone tried to burn it and didn't get the job done."

But Jensen also saw Haitians determined to rebuild their shattered lives, and occasional signs of hope and wonder.

The sorrow of a man who mourned his six-year-old daughter for five days turned to joy when she showed up at the door. After days when residents couldn't find food or water, fruit, vegetables and water began showing up at roadside stands and the city market in Port-au-Prince. 

Jensen's advice to volunteers is part practical, part philosophical.

"You have to listen to their hearts, because a Haitian doesn't think a doctor is doing anything for them unless they've listened to their heart," he said. "It's important to listen to their hearts emotionally as well, praying for them and understanding what they're going through."

It's impossible to leave such devastation unchanged, Jensen said.

"I think our default mode is to take for granted what we have. I was on the team that went to Sri Lanka. I was on the first response team to Katrina. It really puts everything into perspective about what's important and what isn't. The value of human life and relationships. All the rest of the stuff is going to end up in landfill someday."

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There are three main types of fault that may cause an earthquake: normal, reverse(thrust) and strike-slip. Normal and reverse faulting are examples of dip-slip, where the displacement along the fault is in the direction of dip and movement on them involves a vertical component. Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is being extended such as a divergent boundary. Reverse faults occur in areas where the crust is being shortened such as at a convergent boundary. Strike-slip faults are steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip horizontally past each other ; transform boundaries are a particular type of strike-slip fault. Many earthquakes are caused by movement on faults that have components of both dip-slip and strike-slip; this is known as oblique slip.

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