Horror in Haiti

Emotional shock waves have plagued Debbie Runge frequently during the past two weeks, resulting in a condition she terms as “similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The Sheboygan resident was involved in the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred Jan. 12, in Port-au- Prince, Haiti, and surrounding areas. She also was present for more than 40 frightening aftershocks, some of them 5.0-magnitude.

And when she witnessed hundreds of seriously injured victims of the earthquake the following day, “I felt like I was on a battlefield,” she said.

This was Runge’s 15th trip within the past 11 years to the impoverished island nation, the size of Maryland, with a population of 9 million. She traveled with a group of seven members of Bethany Reformed Church in Sheboygan – Runge, Diane Henschel, Jane and Terry Renzelmann, Wendy Seidlitz, June Spoerl and Mike Voskuil and one member from the First Reformed Church of Sheboygan Falls – Jeremy Herzog.

Runge continues to be haunted by the screams of some earthquake victims – adults and children – as they had limbs amputated, without the benefit of anesthesia, or had other medical procedures performed with rudimentary instruments.

“Our sanitary conditions were not up to those we follow here in the U.S.,” Runge noted. “We had only two sets of gloves per person that day, so we were cleaning them with Purel.”

During this time, she was trying to process the scene she was witnessing. “I never thought I’d be in an earthquake in Haiti. Multiply by 100 times what you see on TV,” she said, regarding the quake’s devastation.

“Realize too that 5,000 of the 45,000 Americans who were in Haiti at the time of the earthquake are still unaccounted for,” she added. “That is more than the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

The weeklong trip (Jan. 9-16) for the short-term missionaries began as a routine humanitarian visit to Haiti. Some members of Bethany Reformed Church make a few trips to Haiti each year.

The recent trip was sponsored by Mission E4 of Hubbardston, Mass. This organization has been working hand-in-hand with the Bon Samaritine (Good Samaritan) orphanage in Leogane, Haiti, near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Mission E4 provides food, clothing and education to 16 girls who reside in the orphanage and to the three affiliated schools.

The short-term missionaries also work with those schools and some churches in the area. For instance, they assist in registering students for school and conduct wellness checks. They also complete some construction projects at the orphanage, churches and schools.

Some short-term missionaries from Minnesota and the Massachusetts area joined the Sheboygan County contingent, including the group leader Scott Long, for a total team of 30.

At the end of their workday on Jan. 12, group members were on two tour buses, returning to Villa Orimiso.

“The road was very narrow, and we encountered a truck coming toward us,” Runge recalled. “So, that delayed us by about 30 seconds. We were only several yards from our villa.”

Suddenly, their buses began to sway from side to side.

“A telephone pole fell in the road right in front of us,” she said. “And then the security wall outside the villa crashed into the road and crumbled. If we had pulled up a minute sooner, we would have been under the wall.”

Those riding the bus were unharmed. When they exited, they noticed water splashing out of the outdoor swimming pool adjacent to the villa.

One member of the group had been ill that day and remained at the villa.

“She said the whole floor had been moving from side to side during the earthquake,” Runge said.

Following the disaster, everything came to a standstill, with the power out and most cell phone access cut off.

“There was practically no communication. But fortunately, several hours later, one member of our group from Massachusetts was able to get a message back to the states through his blackberry phone that our short-term missionaries were safe,” Runge noted. “And I was able to send a message on facebook through Jeremy Herzog on Thursday.”

Meanwhile, “The coolest thing after the quake was that the Haitians were out in the streets, and you could hear them singing and praising God,” she noted.

The aftershocks were fearsome, so most people remained out in the streets. “They didn’t know if the buildings would fall, and they were traumatized from the earthquake and screamed during the aftershocks,” Runge said.

The following morning the group learned that their American Airlines flight home had been canceled and that the tower at Port-au-Prince International Airport was down.

Long went for a walk to survey the damages, about a half mile from the villa, in the area of a United Nations post.

“He came back and said conditions were horrific and that we needed to help and to bring medical supplies,” Runge recalled.

One woman in the group from Minnesota is enrolled in nursing school, but Herzog was the only one from the Sheboygan County group who had had a First Aid course. Some members agreed to assist, but others decided to visit the orphanage instead.

“I felt the lord was leading me to go, although I have no medical experience,” Runge said. “I thought I could hand out band aids. But I found out shortly that I needed to do much more than that.

“We had limited medical supplies, such as gauze, Neosporin ointment, silvadene cream and a few bandages,” she said. “So we ripped up our bed sheets into strips and took those along.”

When they arrived at the scene, group members were shocked at what they observed. “We came to a football-sized field of traumatized people with gaping wounds, some of them debris-filled with gravel and dust,” she added. “Everywhere we turned there was another wound worse than the we had just seen.

“The sad part was the desperation of the people, who begged us to help them. We had to do what we could with what we had, like applying tourniquets to limbs that needed amputations.”

Runge commended the Haitians for their resiliency. “Many of the people didn’t even flinch while we cleaned their severe wounds,” she said. “One man was very badly burned, so I applied silvadene cream to the burns.”

The E4 Mission contingent moved on to the grounds of the U. N. post. “We had a building there, and things were a little more structured,” Runge said. “There was a doctor from Sri Lanka there assisting the people. We had to leave at noon, because we were running out of supplies.

“One Haitian asked, ‘Are you leaving?’ There was still a field of people there to care for, so leaving was very traumatic.”

The following day, the group returned to the Bon Samaritne orphanage. “A doctor named Chris had showed up, so she went along,” Runge said. “It was comforting to have an English-speaking doctor with us and interpreters, that we didn’t have the day before.”

The orphanage and a nearby was still standing, but had sustained tremendous damage to the interior. Fortunately, the 16 orphaned girls had survived the earthquake.

“The orphanage compound was turned into a refugee camp,” Runge said. “The nearby clinic and store were usable. The clinic had recently been opened, and it was put to good use.”

However, a school affiliated with the orphanage had been reduced to rubble.

Many children in the area had sustained serious injuries, including one girl who had lost her fingers in the earthquake.

The doctor performed some surgeries, and once again, Runge was traumatized by the patients’ screams.

Later, that week, the short-term missionaries built a makeshift fence to replace the security wall that had been damaged outside the orphanage.

By Saturday, “We decided we would try to leave Haiti,” Runge said. “Our leader Scott was concerned.

“Many of the Haitians at a time of crisis have a fatality mindset. Living is surviving from day to day and doing whatever they have to do to get food and water,” she explained. “The uprising and looting had not yet started, but Scott feared they might.

“Here we were coming out of the villa with our water bottles. And they knew we had food in the villa.”

On Saturday, they rode on buses to Port-au-Prince International Airport. “We went to the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) part of the airport, and an employee let us in.”

Hendrick Motor Sports, a stock-car racing team, had donated the use of its corporate jets to transport Americans from Haiti back to the United States. Thus, the group flew to Fort Pierce, Fla., near Port St. Lucie, and then took a bus to Miami International Airport.

From there, they flew to O’Hare International Airport, arriving in Chicago at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 16. “People were there to meet us and to drive us back to Sheboygan,” Runge said.

She said her heart is still with the Haitians. “I would love to live there full-time,” she said.

She noted that another short-term mission group from Bethany Reformed Church had been planning a trip to Haiti in March. But whether or not that trip will take place remains uncertain at this time.

Note: Anyone who would like to send a donation to Mission E4, is asked to contact the organization’s Web site at www.missionE4.com.