Four patients are unloaded from a helicopter aboard the Comfort
A girl is treated by doctors in the inital receiving area.
A woman speaks to a translator.January 22, 2010
Started the morning with a mild aftershock. I’m standing on the 2nd story balcony, several staffers race past me down the stairs. It was brief, scaring people in the streets for a moment.
Accommodations are pretty tricky as you can imagine. I think the main luxury hotel was destroyed as well as many of the moderate ones. Though a few still are open, the AFP staff is split up among hotels, the bureau- which has 3 rooms, and a house. A few of us are staying at the house of Clarens, the Haitan AFP reporter. It’s quite large, I think he’s sacrificing by sleeping in the dinning room with son and wife while Jordi and I share a room. It has water and a generator, so until about 10pm we have electricity.
Someone from the bureau goes out in the morning and finds baguettes and bananas for breakfast, usually there is cheese and omlets.Yesterday there was an array of fruit and juices and what looked like cold cuts in the afternoon. Dinner is brought here around 6:30pm and we all eat in the courtyard. The past 2 days was chicken, rice & beans and I think fried plantains.
Today I traveled with Daphnie Benoit, a French reporter based in Washington who covers the Pentagon. So she’s been doing the US military angle, there was a briefing at the airport, where ‘central command’ is located, in the morning. Our main mission was to get onto the hospital ship Comfort, anchored in the Port-au-Prince harbor. After being told by the Navy, Army, Coast Guard: yes, maybe, no, wait a bit to see what happens, definitely not, then 2 minutes later,“yes a boat is coming for you” we are whisked out to the harbor.
The ship is huge, a capacity of 1,000 beds. Helicopters land on a continuous basis, we see 4 Haitans on stretchers being unloaded from one. Scores of patients are treated simultaneously, was able to see and operation and speak with some of the doctors, etc. There is a large group of translators, almost 1 per patient. About an hour and 15 minutes later were are headed back to the port.
We give a lift to a Belgium reporter and see a heavily devastated part of town. You see a concrete slab rising from the sidewalk and realize it’s the roof of a several story tall building. Other structures are literally toppled over, cars are crushed , tall signs slice through walls. I think the main problem now seems to be there are probably tens of thousands of people homeless. You see giant fields and parks are now tent cities.
May head back to Leogand to find US Marines tomorrow.
Started the morning with a mild aftershock. I’m standing on the 2nd story balcony, several staffers race past me down the stairs. It was brief, scaring people in the streets for a moment.
Accommodations are pretty tricky as you can imagine. I think the main luxury hotel was destroyed as well as many of the moderate ones. Though a few still are open, the AFP staff is split up among hotels, the bureau- which has 3 rooms, and a house. A few of us are staying at the house of Clarens, the Haitan AFP reporter. It’s quite large, I think he’s sacrificing by sleeping in the dinning room with son and wife while Jordi and I share a room. It has water and a generator, so until about 10pm we have electricity.
Someone from the bureau goes out in the morning and finds baguettes and bananas for breakfast, usually there is cheese and omlets.Yesterday there was an array of fruit and juices and what looked like cold cuts in the afternoon. Dinner is brought here around 6:30pm and we all eat in the courtyard. The past 2 days was chicken, rice & beans and I think fried plantains.
Today I traveled with Daphnie Benoit, a French reporter based in Washington who covers the Pentagon. So she’s been doing the US military angle, there was a briefing at the airport, where ‘central command’ is located, in the morning. Our main mission was to get onto the hospital ship Comfort, anchored in the Port-au-Prince harbor. After being told by the Navy, Army, Coast Guard: yes, maybe, no, wait a bit to see what happens, definitely not, then 2 minutes later,“yes a boat is coming for you” we are whisked out to the harbor.
The ship is huge, a capacity of 1,000 beds. Helicopters land on a continuous basis, we see 4 Haitans on stretchers being unloaded from one. Scores of patients are treated simultaneously, was able to see and operation and speak with some of the doctors, etc. There is a large group of translators, almost 1 per patient. About an hour and 15 minutes later were are headed back to the port.
We give a lift to a Belgium reporter and see a heavily devastated part of town. You see a concrete slab rising from the sidewalk and realize it’s the roof of a several story tall building. Other structures are literally toppled over, cars are crushed , tall signs slice through walls. I think the main problem now seems to be there are probably tens of thousands of people homeless. You see giant fields and parks are now tent cities.
May head back to Leogand to find US Marines tomorrow.
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