Dr. Eric Rasmussen happened to be sitting at his computer when the alert went out. A 7.0 magnitude earthquake had struck Haiti, and the news was grim. Rasmussen, the former Fleet Surgeon for the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet, started to prep for the journey. An expert in disaster response, he had been on 19 previous deployments, including the Indonesian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. He had once lived in Haiti and knew firsthand the challenges there, even without an earthquake. One of the things he did to prepare was to cut his hair to almost nothing—he knew that bathing, along with sleep, would be a luxury.
By the time you read this, the daily headlines from Haiti will long have been replaced by something else in the news cycle. But the plight of the Haitian people should not fade away, nor the work of rescuers and volunteers like Dr. Rasmussen.
The quake hit Haiti on Jan. 12th, with 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater over the next 10 days. It’s estimated that 230,000 people died and 300,000 were treated for injuries. To free those trapped, dozens of amputations had to occur in the field without anesthesia. Now, many hundreds of thousands more need inoculations for tetanus and other elements of basic health care.
Some 58 SAR teams from around the world converged on Haiti. Rescuers returning to the U.S. reported horrendous conditions but also a sense of fulfillment and pride that comes with using their skills to help others.
“We’ve gotten good at this international humanitarian care business,” said Lois Clark McCoy, president of the National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue (NIUSR), speaking of the quick response and coordinated activity. NIUSR is a leading think-tank focused on disaster readiness which for two decades has nurtured the activities of a cadre of medical, rescue, technical, military and communications experts who bring their unique knowledge and passion together in preparation for such an event. One of its alumni is Eric Rasmussen, who is now CEO of the nonprofit InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters), founded by Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google.
Rasmussen was quickly on the ground in Haiti, arriving on Day 3 and immediately setting up with the AlertNet Emergency Information Service. When a disaster like this strikes, he explains, there is a need for someone on the ground with experience and training to assess the situation and do a gap analysis with his or her own eyes and ears—a role he’s used to serving. An area of expertise within InSTEDD, honed by extensive exercises and remote missions, is the implementation of interactive emergency communications, especially where little infrastructure exists. The value of being able to get direct input from people suffering, and to coordinate with those providing care, can’t be overestimated, he says.
The specifics of how that plays out are too much for this column, but one example: Trapped individuals sent SMS messages that they were alive. Someone needed to sift through the messages, translate them from idiomatic Creole and determine the exact location of the caller. Rasmussen was a member of the team who knew the language, knew the neighborhoods, who could pinpoint the location of a described site to within five decimal places and who—most importantly—could relay that information to SAR teams, often resulting in a live rescue.
This is just one story of many humanitarian efforts, but it shows the powerful impact of “congenial collaboration,” as Rasmussen puts it, among dozens of agencies striving to provide humanitarian care.
