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| Coast Guard doing its best to help in Haiti |
| By theday.com |
| Published: 01/21/2010 |
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Cutter crews dispatched to Haiti pitch in amid chaos, destruction to assist quake victims At a makeshift six-bed clinic at the Haitian Coast Guard base in Port-au-Prince last week, amid screams of agony from those waiting to be treated for injuries suffered in the Jan. 12 earthquake, a young girl's hand was amputated with little more than a scalpel. But five days after the 7.0-magnitude temblor had devastated this poverty-stricken Caribbean nation, the ragtag security patrols that protected the small, white hospital building were gone, replaced by U.S. Coast Guard crew from the cutter Tahoma who were trying to stabilize severely injured Haitians so they could be taken to the American ship for better treatment. When the Coast Guard arrived, there were not enough stretchers on hand, so Ensign Shea Quinn, a Tahoma crew member from Gales Ferry, scoured the base for doors and boards that could be used as backboards to transport patients. He also helped surgeons with medical procedures. Later, Quinn and a former Coast Guard Academy classmate shoved first aid supplies into their pockets and went outside into the crowd that had gathered. People pulled at their uniforms, begging them for help, Quinn said. The two men worked side by side to triage and treat the injured and comfort the dying. Soon they were separated, and Quinn worked alone for the next five hours, using the basic first aid skills he learned at the academy. He showed people how to care for their wounds and told them to go into the clinic for antibiotics, even though for some it was too late. "Gangrene had already set in," Quinn wrote in an e-mail Wednesday. "By the time they made it into the clinic, they were going to lose that limb, or worse. There just was nothing else I could do for them." The Tahoma, with its crew of about 100, arrived in the harbor off Port-au-Prince two days after the earthquake struck to begin setting up the clinic. Forty Haitian Coast Guard members were killed when the mess hall at the base collapsed during the quake. Approaching Port-au-Prince, "You would never know that the capital of a country was there," Ensign Kyle Sweet wrote in an e-mail. Sweet, the Tahoma's assistant navigator, grew up in Gales Ferry with Quinn. "All I saw was a black splotch several miles long, where I knew the city had to be. It was as if an artist angrily smudged paint across his painting and left it unfinished." The Notre Dame Cathedral of Port-au-Prince looked like "something out of a bomber raid in the wars of the last century," Sweet noted. All that remained of neighborhoods perched on the mountains Sweet had seen last year were "huge grayish-white scars where parts of the mountain appeared to have been sheared off and thrown into the city below," he reported. Hundreds of Haitians were camped out at the base, and when the clinic opened, people desperately pressed toward the doors. Coast Guard and U.N. peacekeepers from Sri Lanka surrounded the clinic to protect it. "We did have a few unruly people, but they were subdued with a quick show of force from the security team," Quinn wrote. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard held down frantic patients while consoling others. "I did my best to help by carrying people in blankets and I helped set splints on a few compound fractures," Sweet wrote. "In those first few days after the earthquake, the only U.S. assets in the bay were the Coast Guard cutters Forward, Mohawk and Tahoma. If we didn't help these people, who would?" The Tahoma crew cared for patients who had been ferried over from the clinic until a helicopter arrived to bring them to a hospital on the north side of Port-au-Prince, to the airport or to a nearby U.S. Navy aircraft carrier. A pregnant woman delivered her baby inside the clinic, and another gave birth on the deck of the Tahoma while waiting for a helicopter. "No one on board is trained for a mission like this," Quinn wrote. "We had anyone with any sort of medical training or experience on the beach giving aid, ranging from machinery technicians to information technicians to food service specialists. All different rates were in the clinic providing first aid, giving shots, setting up IVs, the whole nine yards ... even giving birth to babies. "None of that is in their job description or training. It was incredible to be a part of that." Quinn said the clinic was much more orderly by Wednesday, with a streamlined system to triage and treat patients. On Wednesday, a powerful aftershock struck Haiti. Quinn, who was on the Tahoma at the time, said it felt like the cutter had hit another ship, though the clinic was not damaged. Quinn, 22, graduated from Ledyard High School in 2005 and from the Coast Guard Academy in 2009. He now lives in Portsmouth, N.H., where the Tahoma is based. "I haven't had much time to reflect on it yet, but I know this experience is something I will never forget," he said. "There were many times I felt horribly inadequate because there was so much I wanted to do - we all wanted to do - for these people, but we lacked the resources and training to take that next step. All we could do was to do the best with what we had, and we certainly did that." Sweet, 24, graduated from Ledyard High School in 2004. He graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2008 and Officer Candidate School later that year. Read More. |
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