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World Vision Canada’s Willard Metzger, director of church relations, was leading a group of volunteers on a trip to Haiti when an earthquake rocked his Port-au-Prince hotel Tuesday afternoon. In the night and day that followed, that hotel became a makeshift hospital — and morgue. This is Willard’s eyewitness account.
By Willard Metzger
Night One
Soon after the quake ended, dust created a haze across the sky and the sound of wailing filled the air. Darkness fell within an hour, hampering immediate rescue efforts.
The Wounded Start to Arrive
Willard Metzger in a makeshift office in Haiti. |
Our hotel became a quick, make-shift medical clinic. People with emergency first aid experience became lead doctors. Bed sheets were ripped into bandages, pool chairs became stretchers and baseboards were stripped to become splints. The make-shift medical clinic worked with the headlights of vehicles until 10:45 p.m. Then the scenes seemed to settle for the night. But not for long.
By 11 p.m. the wounded started pouring in again: a young girl who had been dug from the rubble, still in her school uniform from her walk home, a young boy with a broken ankle, foot pointing outward. These broken limbs needed to be set with little more than a steady hand, ripped bed sheets and splintered base boards. Painful cries rose into the starry sky.
Another tremor shook the ground sending those who could run scrambling into the middle of the unlit streets. But the damage had already been done and the wounded needed care. The street was filled with those receiving medical attention as relatives waved their hands and begged God for mercy on their children.
From Wails to Prayers
This was the scene through the night—stranded hotel patrons sharing the streets with the moans of the wounded. After midnight, the sound of mournful wailing changed to responsive shouts of prayer. The sound of the crowds crying out their prayers lifted into the clear night sky. By 2:30 a.m. I started to identify an area near the front entry as a morgue.
I had hoped for emergency crews with the sunlight of a new day. Instead, the dawn brought an even heavier flow of wounded. More bed sheets ripped into bandages, more furniture broken into splints. Emergency response never came. There was none. Our bed sheets were it. Bed sheets and empathy.
On Wednesday
Wednesday. The wounded came in waves all through the day. The street became a tented city. The morgue grew through the day—little children laid onto the pavement—the little bed sheets unable to cover the cruel reality.
A stream of helicopters buzzed overhead throughout the day. Our little street corner became the emergency airlift for the critically wounded. Prayers that the bed sheets would sustain life until the victims were airlifted to safety. Desperate parents tug on our shirts, despite trying to explain that we are but patrons of the hotel. But we are the only ones with bandages—so we are the only ones to give them hope.
Second Night in Haiti: How Long Before the Night Feels Safe?
The second night after the quake and the aftershocks seem stronger than yesterday. People were shaken out of their sleep at 2 a.m. and scrambled out into the open night air. Each tremor reignites choruses of crying. Dogs bark and a child wails in the dark—another new injury. It is tough to know how to protect your children as a parent.
You strive to make things normal for your children but the damaged walls of what was once home now seem like a trap. Each tremor further dislodges compromised structures. Each tremor adds to the list of injuries and inflicts more uncertainty. How long before a restful night? How long before it feels safe to sleep in your bed again?
Helicopters lifted the seriously injured to safety yesterday—but the newly wounded through the night must wait until day break. Parents are left to pray that the injuries of their children are not severe, but will be bad enough to make it onto the air lift to medical care. It is hard to hope when severe injury becomes your only ticket to securing the protection your children rely on you to provide. The list of "not bad enough" is numbing: a man with broken limbs, a small boy with his right eye swollen shut, a little girl with scrapes across her back and a deep gash on the top of her head, a little finger with the first layer of skin peeled back.
On a normal day, these injuries would break your heart, but this night you sigh a relief—they'll live. Parents who had hoped for something more than bed sheet bandages are left disappointed, but at least the bed sheets are not being laid over lifeless bodies. Maybe the sun rising over the hills will bring everything back into perspective. It is always easier to have hope during the day.
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