Day 1 Pictures

Many of you have been asking for pictures. It's taken me a few days to get to them but here they are. What I plan on doing is posting some pictures from each day in a blog for that day. Along with the pictures I will tell a little info. so that you can gain a little more insight into what we did. The following pictures are from day 1. They cover our arrival at JFK, arrival in Haiti, our ride from the airport, as well as our setup at what would be our home base for the week, the Haitian police compound.

This is the team assembling at JFK at 3am to start our journey. Our team consisted of 38 people from doctors to nurses to EMT's to translators and non medical staff.







Arrival safely in Haiti. Who knew how crazy Haitian baggage claim would be?!?!








It's ok though we had a band waiting for us...and hundreds of people outside the airports gates for some reason!





This is us loading all of our luggage into a Tap-Tap. Basically a big
bus but much more colorful and always blasting music. Besides gathering our bags from baggage claim this was quite possibly the most stressful event of the day. We had to fight our way through the crowd (aka the hundreds of people waiting outside the gate) with 70+ oversized bags while everyone begged to carry your luggage for money and would literally take them out of your hands.



Some of our "greeters" at the airport.











An example of what Haitians are now calling "home."









Haitian Pride!









Damage from the earthquake.









The damage is pretty widespread but it's crazy to see a building completely flattened and then see one next to it still standing. I will say though that there is practically no structures that are liveable.






Just your everyday roadside garbage in Haiti. This a pretty typical site and in some areas this would be a "clean" street corner. Which is sad because Haiti is such a beautiful country!






More damage on our drive in from the airport to downtown Port au Prince.










More remenents of the earthquake












One of the many rubble littered streets of Port au Prince. The epicenter was about 7km outside of Port au Prince in a place called Carrefour, a largely residential and very poor commune in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. The district has an estimated population of 408,000 as of 2003. It is mostly a bedroom community for those who work in central Port-au-Prince.







Keep in mind this is 8 weeks after the earthquake and little to no clean up or restoration has begun.







Everyone uses "before the earthquake" or "after the earthquake" as a time stamp for references things. I think that will be something that will stick for generations to come.










The outskirts of a tent city. I expected most of the people in Haiti to be living in tents or on the streets. What I didn't expect was for EVERYONE to be living on the streets or in a tent (if they're luck enough to have one).






The view, overlooking the presidential palace, from our luxurious penthouse suite atop the Haitian Police(aka CIMO) compound. And by luxurious I mean a dripping water hose for a shower and a toilet you flushed with a bucket of water, but hey at least we had running water and a toilet!! As far as the palace, the president fled before it collapsed.





A massive tent city across from the presidential palace that was described to us as "once covered in beautiful green grass."








This is the finance building across the street from the presidential palace. During the earthquake the top 14 leaders under the president were all have a meeting in this building. They were all killed. Two sections of this building collapsed while we were there trapping 11 people and sending one injured to our clinic with an open head wound.


This was a building next to the police compound. On one day they pulled bodies out of here and were burning them. A very morbid and sad feeling!







We have arrived at our home for the week, Mission Riscate and are settling in. Mission Riscate is a mission that provides food as well as runs a daily medical clinic which we staffed everyday as well as rural clinics and staffing two hospitals.



This is the main tent for Mission Riscate also inside the CIMO compound where we stayed. The clinics were located below us inside rooms of the police compound. This is a sign outside the General clinic. We also had an OB clinic room, a pediatrics clinic room, and a dental clinic room. At 5:30-6:00am every morning 600 or so people would be waiting outside the gates to the compound to be seen. Staff would begin intake and we would start triage at 8am.



Arrival and setup day was finally over and time to relax before bed. From left, Mike (ER doc from New Jersey), Myra (NP from New Jersey), and Elliott (oral/facial surgeon from Long Island).