People around the world scrambled to offer whatever aid they could when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti last month.
Two local men were among the few that were able to reach the devastated country in the chaotic days immediately following the tragedy.
Bob Lambert, a Village of Ortonville resident, and Adam Stith, a Brandon Township resident, used their skills as pilots, access to small jets, and a brief window of opportunity to help save lives in the disaster in which more than 200,000 people died and 300,000 more were estimated to have been injured.
‘It’s about being timely,? Lambert said. ‘There’s plenty of people who want to help, but you have to be able to do it quickly. You can’t always rely on the government, it takes citizens sometimes. Anyone in this community would have done the same thing, we just had the tools to do them. The need was there for our attributes for about a week, until the Red Cross could get their wheels turning. We were there when lives needed to be saved.?
Lambert and Stith are both pilots for Williams International, a Commerce Township based company that bills itself as the world leader in the development, manufacture and support of small gas turbine engines. On Jan. 14, two days after the quake, the National Business Aircraft Association sent a plea for help to them via e-mail, indicating a need for corporate airplanes. Lambert and Stith went to CEO Gregg Williams, who told the pilots to go help.
The humanitarian group CARE (Corporate Aircraft Responding to Emergencies) assigned the men passengers and medical freight. On Jan. 17, they flew a Cessna Citation 10, the fastest business jet in the world, down to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was the staging area for rescue operations. There, they picked up more than 800 pounds of medical supplies, as well as doctors, and a Haitian-American woman whose child was in Haiti, waiting to be reunited with her. Lambert and Stith flew their passengers and freight to Santiago, Dominican Republic on Jan. 18, a logistical drop-off point.
The Port-Au-Prince Airport, a 7-hour drive from Santiago, required reservations five days ahead of time for planes. The earthquake had left it with only one runway and plenty of chaos.
‘We were hooking up with smaller airplanes landing on roads,? said Lambert. ‘The smaller airplanes were able to take our supplies and land on roads in Haiti.?
The next day, the 19th, they were able to land at the Port-Au-Prince Airport, but had only a 2-hour window in the dark, with no communication, to pick up a Haitian mother, her three children and a severely injured elderly woman who they would deliver to a Santiago hospital on a 25-minute flight.
‘Port Au Prince was quite alarming,? said Lambert. ‘The airport was a zoo with planes and equipment. We just wanted to get out of there with our people. Things were getting tense, we were trying to leave, when the other pilot we went down with came wandering out with these three kids… There were a lot of buildings collapsed, fires, lots of people hanging on the airport fence.?
‘Looking for help? Looking to leave? Who knows?? wondered Stith.
‘In five days (since the quake), people were dying, needing amputations,? continued Lambert. ‘The Red Cross was not geared up to help that fast.?
Stith and Lambert returned on Jan. 19, expecting to be done with their contribution to the rescue effort. But Williams told them to return with a smaller airplane, which would be more effective with the airport restrictions in Haiti.
On their second mission trip, they took more medical supplies and relief workers and flew from Ft. Lauderdale to Cap Haitien International Airport in the northern part of Haiti.
‘We had a list of doctors that we were supposed to bring back to the States and we couldn’t find them,? recalls Stith. ‘It was a tiny cinderblock terminal, it was hot, people were trying to get out.?
Those people included Americans who had adopted children, students, relief workers. Stith and Lamber were approached by a woman who identified herself as a doctor from the United States and her boyfriend. In a car, said the woman, was her sister, the second-highest ranking official in the Haitian education system and whom she had just operated on, amputating her arms.
‘In talking to that doctor, the scenes she described in the hospital were awful? rusty saws and pocketknives, no medications or antibiotics,? said Stith. ‘So a simple injury like a cut or a compound fracture became an amputation. They had no antibiotics to prevent infection.?
As time passed, it became clear the doctors Stith and Lambert were sent to bring back from Haiti weren’t showing up. They had to leave. They filled out paperwork for the doctor, her sister, and her boyfriend to bring them back instead.
‘They were on the edge of hell,? said Lambert. ‘We brought her sister out and back to an American hospital in the space of three hours… Our direction was loose, we had to make adjustments and overcome logistical obstacles, but we followed our heart. Communication was almost zero, any changes in the game plan we had to do on our own.?
Stith called the experience life-changing.
‘I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude,? he said. ‘Your day-to-day worries and concerns don’t seem so big anymore when you see people who are truly in need. We accomplished what we wanted to do, but in the end, you’re still left feeling like you should have done more. People in this country rarely realize how good they have it. Those people had nothing to begin with, and then to have a disaster like that… we can’t comprehend it as Americans.?