Graham charity hits Haiti at a run

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Linda Pierre winces as Dr. Leonardo Febres opens a small flap in her full-leg cast to check the healing of her left tibia, severely broken during the mammoth earthquake. "It's OK, it's OK," he soothes her.

He moves quickly to the next bed, where 11-year-old Fednell Bienaime lies naked, a tree limb taped to his broken right leg to hold it in place.

"The boy needs cirugia," Febres says, mixing English and his native Spanish. "The boy needs surgery."

Febres, an orthopedic surgeon from Ecuador, and the other doctors working in this overrun, 100-bed hospital are here because of Boone-based Samaritan's Purse, the relief agency led by Franklin Graham that was one of the first relief agencies on the ground to bring aid to this devastated island country.

Samaritan's Purse has sent more than 50 people, including 18 doctors along with nurses, water engineers and chaplains. It has also flown in several airplane-loads of emergency supplies and equipment. On Monday, a barge will leave Fort Lauderdale, Fla., carrying jackhammers, a bulldozer and other equipment to clear Haitian roads.

This is far from the agency's first disaster, and Samaritan's Purse has built a reputation as a lean machine that responds quickly - and with Christian fervor.

Some have suggested that proselytizing has no place in emergency relief. But Graham, son of Charlotte-born evangelist Billy Graham, is unapologetic about ministering to victims spiritually as well as medically.

"We want to bring God's comfort to them," says Graham. "I'm an ambassador for Jesus Christ and want everybody we meet to know that God loves them."

Graham says close to $10 million in donations have poured in to Samaritan's Purse since the earthquake hit. But he says the charity will probably spend at least that and probably more.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us," he says.

Ready to roll

With news of a natural disaster, Samaritan's Purse springs into action like a military unit, complete with muscular-sounding acronyms: The IMT (incident management team) directs operations from a "war room" in Boone, dispatching a DART (disaster assistance response team) to the scene and transporting - by plane, boat and convoy - the equipment and supplies they'll need "in the field."

Ken Isaacs, the group's vice president in charge of response, was about to step on a treadmill at the Boone Wellness Center on Jan. 12 when he spotted a CNN news flash. A lert: Magnitude-7.3 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

"I knew right away it was a catastrophic event," Isaacs recalls. "I thought, 'I've got to go now.'"

He raced to his phone, and was told five people were already in his war room and that plans were afoot. By 2 a.m., a four-person DART - including Dr. David Gettle, an emergency medical specialist - was on the road to the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport.

Twenty-four hours after the quake, they were on the ground in Haiti.

"What impressed me is Samaritan's Purse's ability to work in so many different arenas once they're on the ground," says Dr. Bill Frist, a former U.S. senator and one of the surgeons working with Febres at the Baptist Haiti Mission hospital last week. "They very aggressively put in surgical teams. And within 72 hours, they had a water-filtration system for the hospital that can produce 10,000 gallons of clean water a day."

Graham says it's crucial in such emergencies to get going, and fast.

"If you have to have it all figured out first, maybe you never go," he says. "We go, and then constantly adjust. 'Here's the need. Get the trucks loaded and get out of here.'"

Getting organized

It's this no-frills, fast-moving approach that Frist likes. The one-time Senate majority leader has been volunteering with Samaritan's Purse, mostly in Sudan, for 11 years.

"What distinguishes [Samaritan's Purse] is the efficiency, coupled with speed," he says. "There's little overhead, and when there's a problem, it's dealt with directly."

Samaritan's Purse effectively took over the hospital at the Baptist Haiti Mission. Gettle, the first Samaritan's Purse doctor to arrive, discovered that the mission's medical director had died in the earthquake and that no one had been able to find the hospital's orthopedic surgeon.

"When we got in, it was chaotic. Who was sick? Who needed surgery? There was no order," Frist says. "They did a tremendous job organizing things: The nurses set up a triage system, so that the sickest patients got treated first."

They also put out the word - via Twitter - that they were praying for French-speaking doctors. Dr. Will Conner of Matthews, who also speaks a smattering of Creole and was already in Haiti treating the injured, answered the call.

Working toward water

Besides setting up water purification at the hospital, Samaritan's Purse also installed one at a university in Carrefour - population 20,000 - east of Port-au-Prince. The $5,000 devices can satisfy the basic water needs - drinking, cooking, hand washing - for 10,000 people.

All around Haiti's capital city, Samaritan's Purse staffers saw signs in English, French and Creole, all with the same message: "Need food and water. Please help."

"It hurts my heart," said John Dallman, the agency's senior water and sanitation adviser. "I wish we had the Marines to fly us out and put our units where needed."

There were other problems on the ground: Not enough antibiotics to stem infections, not enough hard plaster casts, not even enough pins to clamp bones together.

For the past two weeks, Samaritan's Purse has sent in medical reinforcements armed with supplies. But with so many victims, Frist says, there was never enough.

Roadblocks

It is also difficult to get the medicine to those who need it.

Like the hundreds of other relief groups helping in Haiti, Samaritan's Purse has been frustrated by Port-au-Prince's damaged port. Many roads are also impassable, cell phone and Internet reception is spotty and the airport has become a bottleneck.

Two days after the earthquake, a plane carrying Graham and Fox News' Greta Van Susteren circled the airport for nearly three hours before giving up on plans to land.

Rather than wait for others to solve these problems, Samaritan's Purse has returned to its can-do ways.

On Monday, the barge leaving Florida will be loaded to capacity with heavy equipment the agency picked up during last-minute shopping sprees at Lowe's and Caterpillar. Also Haiti-bound: earthmovers, excavators, hydraulic hammers, dump trucks and a bulldozer.

With some cell phones not working, the group is also shipping in older technology: 50 two-way radios.

Then there's the airport problem. Graham, who was in India last week holding a crusade, spent much of his off-stage time trying to work out a way to avoid the Port-au-Prince runways. If it works out, the charity will fly its crews and equipment into the neighboring Dominican Republic, then shuttle them in small planes to dirt strips on farmland near the Haitian capital.

"We know some farmers down there," Graham says. "But we have to get approval from Haitian customs and immigration to come in."

Beyond measure

Graham says it's hard to measure the impact Samaritan's Purse has had in the last two weeks because of the enormous devastation. He even wonders whether all the efforts by all the groups that raced to the country will be enough to meet what he calls "the mountain of needs."

He and others at Samaritan's Purse know one thing: Haiti will need their help for a long time to come. Plans call for the charity to move from relief to recovery, rotating in fresh teams and more equipment.

"In a few weeks, a lot of the people now in Haiti will be gone," Graham says. "But ours is a long-term commitment ... This is something we'll be involved with for years."