1/31/10
Today we went to the city (Port-au-Prince) and it was as bad as you might expect. Buildings here are not well built and are built completely of concrete. When you shake a four-story building like this it collapses flat with everyone inside. Seeing a destroyed city was hard to do. It was difficult to believe it was real. The smell and a few bodies remain. People are going on with their lives for the most part, but there are tent cities everywhere with 10s of thousands of people. They give off a feeling of restlessness and despair.
Today we set up clinic in a school. The area was about 50 x 150 feet with surrounding one-story classrooms and an open courtyard with huge shade trees. The main school building was bright white and bright blue with two-story columns and enormous blue doors. It was decorated with patios and rails. It collapsed except for the entryway. You could tell the community took immense pride in the school, and unfortunate sequelae of their beautiful school was that the high walls, high ceiling and patios collapsed and buried twenty of their children in the rubble. We were told the bodies were still buried. The courtyard was littered with empty juice boxes, a few small backpacks and neatly lettered assignments among the broken concrete and desks. Out of the rubble, the corner of a chalkboard poked with neat and bright letters announcing school pride. Each letter was written with a different color of chalk by a teacher the morning of the quake. You can see the love for the classroom in the writing. That was as hard for me to see, as were the broken desks and half finished lessons on the chalk boards.
In clinic we saw many patients with multiple injuries from falling concrete, including persistent infections and broken bones. Tomorrow we will have a few hours of clinic and will likely see several hundred patients.
Guesly should be commended for leading this trip down here – we have treated thousands of patients and saved many lives. Hopefully we have given a small amount of comfort to this country. I want to thank Guesly and our community for making this small amount of healing possible. We will be home in a few days.
- Dr. Nuemann