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As Joanna Seibel’s sense of security trembled with the ground below her, she sprinted for her baby and headed for the door as the building crumbled around her. Outside she was greeted with wails as clouds of dust swirled above disintegrating concrete.
In another part of the city Leann Chong became a floating sandwich as the floor below her dropped to the hotel’s ground level and debris from the three floors above her began to obliterate everything as gravity pulled them to earth. Pressed into a fetal position with her face to the ground, Chong yelled out to the voices she heard rushing past, afraid she would be left for dead.
Jim Gulley was standing in the lobby of the same hotel with several colleagues when the weight of the rocking structure came slamming down. Pinned in by debris, they huddled in a pocket created by broken beams and what was once the receptionist’s desk.
Like hundreds of thousands of others in Haiti on Jan. 12, these strangers are yoked by the haunting sounds and images of a world consumed by the zealous wrath of the shifting earth. But there is much more that binds these three than the common suffering of a killer quake—each were in Haiti doing work through Christian ministries.
Joanna Seibel was working with Christian Aid Ministries in the village of Titanyen, not far from the capital city. In an interview with Danielle Miskell of Assist News Service, Seibel said she and other CAM staff members raced to a clinic operated by Global Outreach. There they treated victims from a burning flour mill. While several volunteers stitched gaping wounds without anesthesia, the men began to pull people from the rubble.
“(They heard) tapping coming from down under, the dead lying around, dead and injured being pushed in wheelbarrows, people bedding down in the streets for the night, multiple people trapped in a human puzzle down under, that they could see them, but not free them…” Seibel told Miskell.
Leann Chong, missions and travel director with Food for the Poor, was in the city leading a short-term trip with 12 students and two faculty advisers from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.
She was getting ready for dinner when the quake hit. Members of her group were in various locations.
Trapped for hours
After the initial shaking stopped, Chong was trapped for 17 hours beneath 3 feet of concrete, chin tucked and face to the floor.
“I prayed continuously all night,” Chong said, adding that I Thessalonians 5:16-18 kept running through her mind.
“Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Jesus Christ.”
Pulled from the rubble by someone she believed was a United Nations worker, Chong was transported to a hospital in the Dominican Republic where she was healing from an injury to her right leg. It was there she learned that four of the students and the two advisers were missing, while the rest of the team were transported back to Florida by private charter. As of press time, the six volunteers from Lynn University were still missing in the hotel debris.
Jim Gulley, of Frisco, Colo., a United Methodist minister and consultant for the United Methodist Committee on Relief, spent 55 hours in the darkened debris trap that had pinned the legs of his colleagues the Rev. Sam Dixon, head of the United Methodist Committee on Relief and the Rev. Clinton Rabb, a member of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
Crunched inside a space that measured 3 feet high, 5 feet wide and 8 feet long, Gulley said they and two others sang hymns and prayed while waiting to be rescued. In an interview with ABC News, Gulley said they passed around chewing gum and a single lollipop. Several in the group drank their own urine to survive.
When Gulley was pulled out he had only lacerations and bruising, but no serious injuries.
“I'm in good shape compared to so many other people,” Gulley told Summit Daily News.
Dixon, however, died before he could extricated from the concrete mass. Rabb was rescued and transported to a Florida hospital where he died from his injuries.
Mind-boggling destruction
Nearly two weeks after the quake hit, authorities are estimating that as many as 200,000 people died and two million are now homeless.
“How can anyone ever know?” Seibel said. “The dead litter the streets, hang from destroyed buildings, lie under fallen walls, and are buried under rubble.”
Vernon Brewer, president of World Help, in a letter to supporters posted on its Web site said his team arrived Jan. 21 to unspeakable desperation.
“I can honestly tell you that I saw things in Haiti this week that I have never seen in all my years of ministry and travel,” Brewer said. “What you are seeing on TV doesn’t even begin to show the magnitude of death and destruction in Haiti. Our team literally was overcome with emotion and not a word was spoken as we walked the streets (if you could still call them streets) filled with rubble, debris, and dead bodies. The smell of death was overwhelming . . . even with our respirators and Vick’s Vapor Rub, the stench was unbearable as thousands of bodies still remain buried underneath the collapsed buildings and line the streets.”
Urgent race
The collapse of the city’s already tenuous infrastructure was making relief efforts frustratingly slow, with 1,400 planes waiting to bring supplies into the affected area, while makeshift clinics have waiting lists at least 12 days long.
“There are a lot of people looking for supplies that are not here yet,” said Darry Hall, the team leader for San Diego-based Rescue Task Force in Port-au-Prince.
The team, which arrived in the Dominican Republic on Jan. 19 before heading into Haiti, helped at Good Samaritan School compound where volunteers from World Emergency Relief —UK had initially fed 150 children. Within days, more than 2,000 people came to camp out at the site.
“Long days and short nights,” Hall said in another dispatch to the San Diego headquarters. “We do not rest much—every minute is the difference between life and death. We are needed and welcomed wherever we go. I have never seen so many with pain in their eyes.”
Task force workers also provided medical supplies to the U.S. embassy and have been asked by International Faith Mission to re-establish electricity for their headquarters and provide medical supplies for their clinic.
Persistent unrest
Even with relief workers hobbled by natural circumstances, residents have become restless and roaming gangs have exacerbated the violence brought on by an earth that continues to heave.
“We are hearing lots of gunfire,” Hall reported via a phone conference with local task force officials. “Military on street corners. Still many bodies in the street and vehicles are being ambushed with roadblocks of bodies. The biggest thing is search and rescue but there are not many people helping with supplies. If we can somehow get the supplies we can get them to those who need it.”
The group still needs food, water, medical supplies, flashlights and batteries. The region, he said, could use more electrical experts who can help restore power. Several workers from SDG&E are part of the task force team.
“Nothing is going to happen until we take care of the power,” the team leader said. “Doing the best we can with what we have."
Andrea Stone, the executive director of Rescue Task Force, said supply caravans are considering a new approach of off-loading supplies in more discreet areas so that orphanages, schools and refugee camps are not targets by marauding bands of thugs with weapons.
“Our team is traveling with two active duty military members. They will do whatever it takes to get the supplies in the hands and hearts of those in need.”
To contribute to the Christian relief efforts in Haiti go to Christian Examiner report on Relief Efforts
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