This will be the first of the direct encounter experiences of our man Bill (not his real name) who was and is on the scene in Haiti. As the tragedy enters the sad follow on phases after the day of horror we present the unique experience of Bill on that day and will follow it in later installments with his subsequent duties and events of the aftermath. The material presented is from direct interviews with Bill and through his written accounts to the Academy.

In the late afternoon of Jan13, 2010 Bill was returning to the three story cement house on a mountain that his agency used as a home office and living quarters. He had been in country for about a month some days busy and some days not. He had gone upstairs to get ready for an embassy event at the Montana Hotel and so was switching from work clothes and tennis shoes to something a little more formal, to include leather shoes.

As he came out of the bathroom on the third floor of this building sometime after 5pm he heard what sounded like a bomb go off, but a moment later it could not be a bomb as a series of rumblings and then vibration of the floor beneath his feet began. He started to go down the hall, but the wall to his left disintegrated and he instinctively retreated to the arch of the doorway to the bathroom. Concurrently the floor at the end of the hall began to collapse like a domnino row in his direction and as it reached him (in micro seconds he suspects in hindsight, but in a surreal slow motion at the time) the entire building collapsed and he found himself free floating. Something seemed to hit him in the back of his head, but he was amazed that it did not seem to hurt..When asked what he was thinking if anything he replied, So this is where I die?

The next thing he knew he was awake under the debris of the house later to find that it was quite a ways down the mountain. He could breath and did a rapid assessment of self to find he could see, feel, and speak. He could move his arms a little, but he could not move his legs initially. Shortly he realized that his feet were pinned under concrete. Then the leather shoes came in handy, because he was able to wrench one foot out after a time and then with more difficulty he was able to get the other foot free. The shoes stayed with the concrete. But now he could move a little. So a little at a time he tunneled through the debris until he was outside of it. He was bruised all over but did not notice it. Much of his clothing had been striped off in the fall, but he was not aware of that either til he and a teammate noted each others injuries and tattered clothing.

The house was gone and with it the office and medical supplies of his agency. Bill and his companion linked up with a surviving guard of their area and with this man found another area where survivors many of whom were also UN related were holding up for the night. A perimeter was set. They slept in the open and in the dark felt multiple after shocks punctuated by roars of human voices from the city below.

The next morning around 10 am a convoy from the US Embassy picked up Bill and his compatriots. On arrival at the Embassy workers who had not been in the quake destruction gave clothes to Bill and others to replace what they were wearing (everything else was gone). He noted that the shoes he got were 3 sizes too big but later when he could get the right size his feet were too swollen to get in them. At this time however he immediately went from clothing to the ad hoc aid station which had been set up and started working. There was not yet the deluge of cases, one that stuck in his mind was getting a sixteen month old Haitian with a femur fracture out on a Coast Guard helicopter. Bill himself did not last much longer. As he recalls he was noted to be too injured to work. He disagreed, but was outranked and so evacuated back to the states starting in a work horse C-130.

The world has since seen much of the destruction, but as Bill noted he had never seen such devastation to include all of his experience, war , humanitarian and the Trade Towers. But Bill is back on the scene and we will present more of his experiences in later updates and issues.

Bill is a combat veteran as well as an FMCC (Fellow in Mass Casualty Care) of the Academy and so not new to action. We invite other members and non members to share their experiences by submission to the journal Mascal War and Disaster or as letters or summaries which will be presented in Interim Updates like this. We invite those who have met the requirements of the FMCC and FDM in this disaster to submit for entry into the fellowships. There is always much for us to learn from each of these sad travails.

the Editor