Haiti Earthquake Relief Missions
January and February 2010
Since then I have flown two separate relief missions delivering doctors and medical supplies to Jacmel, a small city of 40,000 on Haiti's southern shore about 30 miles from Port-au-Prince.
Here is a quick summary of the missions, some stories, my experience flying down there, pictures, and whatever else I thought might be interesting :-)
First Mission:
January 20th, 2010 - January 23rd, 2010
This mission I flew in my Cessna 182, N8050J, from Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
On 2 flights into Haiti I transported about 700 pounds of supplies and 3 doctors.
Second Mission:
February 17th, 2010 - February 22nd, 2010
This time I was joined by 2 pilot friends, Tomoharu Nishino and Jordan Zaretsky, in another C182, N736ZV.
We left from northern New Jersey, picked up about 1000 pounds of supplies in southern New Jersey, and flew via North Carolina, Florida, Bahamas, Dominican Republic to Haiti. This time the doctors of Team Ange and I had organized transportation for 19 doctors and roughly 6000 pounds of supplies from the Dominican Republ ic to Jacmel. In total I flew into Haiti 6 times.
Here is a map of the Caribbean and airports (blue dots) that I used during my 2 missions to Haiti.
On the first mission I picked up supplies in Ft. Lauderdale and flew non-stop to El Higuero in the Dominican Republic. The next morning I delivered the supplies to Jacmel, and then after a few short back and forth trips, I picked up 3 doctors and more gear in Cabo Rojo and also brought them to Jacmel. The next day I returned to Florida.
On the 2nd mission (New Jersey and North Carolina aren't on this map :-), we briefly stopped in Ft. Lauderdale again to pick up the life rafts, then stopped for fuel in Stella Maris, Bahamas, and on to El Higuero. Over the next 3 days, between a total of 6 planes, we flew 16 missions from El Higuero and Santiago to Jacmel. I myself flew 6 times into Haiti. After dropping off the last doctors Tomoharu, Jordan and I flew straight from Jacmel, via Stella Maris and Ft Lauderdale to Savannah, Georgia, before returning to NJ the next day.
This is N8050J in Ft Lauderdale after I received the supplies for my very first mission.
When the earthquake struck, my wife, Elena, and I happened to be in Florida getting ready to join a fly-in trip to the Cayman Islands organized by Jim Parker of www.caribbeanflyingadventures.com
Since Jim lives in Santo Domingo, DR, and his wife, who was supposed to come on the Cayman trip, had to stay back helping in the earthquake relief, I offered to come down to the Dominican Republic right away, if there is anything I could do. But two days after the earthquake there was just too much chaos and so we decided to still do the Cayman trip as planned (link to Cayman trip coming soon).
While in the Cayman Islands, we monitored the situation in Haiti closely to see if there is any urgent help needed.
After we returned to Florida, Angelflight East, a non-profit organization (also see Air Charity Network) that sets up air transportation for people in need and who I regularly fly for, had contacted me asking if I would be willing to take medical supplies to Haiti. Angelflight knew I was in Florida because I had taken a passenger from Allentown, PA to Orlando, FL on our way to the Cayman trip a week earlier.
To make a long story short, I took the mission and Angelflight arranged to have the supplies delivered to Ft. Lauderdale where I picked them up to take them to Haiti.
My plane was pretty packed after all the supplies were loaded.
There is a lot of water down in the Caribbean and I always wanted the life raft within reach. By the way, those big AGFA boxes contain X-ray film for the doctors.
Here is the full route from Ft. Lauderdale to El Higuero on my G1000 GPS moving map display. I had to fly non-stop from Florida to the Dominican Republic because the supplies arrived late in Ft Lauderdale, it was too late for a fuel stop in the Bahamas, VFR (visual flight rules) landings and departures after sunset are not allowed where I planned to stop.
This non-stop trip took about 5 hours.
This is the map when I first got to the Dominican Republic near Puerto Plata. From Turks and Caicos to the DR was also the longest over-water stretch during this flight.
When I arrived in El Higuero, DR, late in the evening, Jim Parker was there to greet me.
I cannot thank Jim Parker and his wife, Margie, enough for their hospitality and help during both my missions !!
El Higuero airport from the air,...
... and from the ground. The small building on the far left was initially set up as a coordination center for the UN and other aid organizations. Later that moved to the large terminal building on the right.
In the small building they had put up a map of Haiti with all the airports that missions were flown into. Jacmel is on the south shore, closest to the Haiti-DR border.
The city of Santo Domingo in the distance
The GPS map of the flight from El Higuero to Jacmel, crossing over two pretty large mountain ranges, so most of the time we had to climb up to 8000 or 9000 feet to cross over. In the afternoons, when clouds were forming, we often had to go even higher or fly along the coastline underneath the clouds.
Some pictures from the flight over.
This is a map view during the flight right before crossing over the second mountain range. The blue line running from left to right (doing some zig-zag) just above the middle of the screen is the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
The map cursor is set above a lake in the valley between those two mountain ranges, and as you can see in the top left, near 'ELEV', this lake is 113 feet below sealevel !!
At the west end of this valley (top in this view) is the city or Port-au-Prince.
Here is a picture of this lake.
My first glimpse of Jacmel in the distance,...
And Jacmel airport.
The Canadian military had taken over the airport operations soon after the earthquake. Impressive how well organized everything was. Good Job, Canadians !
And the Canadian 'Control Tower' :-)
That's me and N8050J, before unloading the supplies.
The truck with all the supplies after unloading.
Helicopters were constantly arriving with other supplies.
The old terminal building at Jacmel airport.
This is the new terminal building still under construction.
After that Jim and I briefly left the airport grounds and gave out snacks
we brought along to local people waiting across the street.
That was all I really saw of Haiti,... :-(
While we were in Jacmel, we found out that the doctors, who were supposed to be in Haiti already, were still stuck in the small town of Cabo Rojo near the Haitian-Dominican border. Luckily there was an airport there. So first I dropped off Rob Barger, who was coordinating everything in Jacmel for the doctors of Team Ange, in Cabo Rojo so he could bring them up to speed, I had to fly back to Higuero to get gas and then returned to pick up 3 doctors and some more supplies to take them to Jacmel. After that I returned to Cabo Rojo to pick up Rob again and take him back to El Higuero.
Some pictures of the southern Haitian coastline.
This is the Haiti-DR border. It's a bit hard to see, but the dried up river bed
is essentially the borderline between the 2 countries.
The first Team Ange doctors, Katie, Mark, Dave, arriving in Jacmel.
As far as I know, these were the first doctors and first medical supplies that arrived in Jacmel. That was 10 days after the earthquake. You can imagine how desperate the medical situation in that town must have been, especially knowing that the main hospital in town had collapsed.
This is on the way back when I picked up Rob in Cabo Rojo. You better be careful flying there, 'cause when you hit this guy on landing,... that could hurt !! :-)
The DCR (Cabo Rojo) VOR. That's a navigation aid that us pilots use to find our way around.
In general, flying in the DR and Haiti was quite different from what we are used to here in the US. Few air traffic controllers have radar, or any weather reporting capability, so very often, you are on your own. Finding your way, knowing where the other airplanes are (if they are even talking on radio, or in your language :-), and getting around bad weather. Often in the afternoon, massive cumulunimbus clouds (thunderstorm) formed and our nice shortcut from Higuero to Jacmel over the mountains was cut off, so we had to find ways around. On our last flight, we climbed up to 10,000 feet, over much of the weather and headed north towards the Bahamas. Once we reached Port-au-Prince approach control, we were trying the whole time to get a transponder code (squawk), and pick up our IFR clearance, but even after dozens of attempts, no luck, and by that time I had entered Miami center's airspace which reaches all the way down to the southern Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. Then we received the code and our clearance,...
At Jim's house in Santo Domingo after a successful day of flying, Margie, Jim, and Rob. The doctors called us that evening that they had already performed surgeries and treated dozens of patients. That felt really good to hear !
Jacmel from the air.
A hotel that was being developed on the waterfront, and some sunken ships.
When I first flew into Jacmel, I thought it doesn't look that bad. Not that many buildings have collapsed. But then I was told that many buildings just collapsed straight down, so essentially they are just flat. In these pictures, if you look very closely, you can find some of those houses.
Jim took this picture when he went into Jacmel.
This is a picture of the same tent area in town. It used to be a soccer field. The first picture is from my first trip, about 10 days after the earthquake, the 2nd one is 3 weeks after that.
And another tent city in the town square.
The following pictures were taken by Glenn Chong, who actually managed to take a trip out to the hospital, the doctors of Team Ange had set up. It was obviously WAY too small for all the injured people there. It still amazes me how much these doctors were able to do with the limited resources they had.
Below are some random pictures from both missions.
On the 2nd mission, we flew a little bit in 'formation'.
And again a ton of material that we had picked up At South Jersey Regional Airport (KVAY).
On the way south we stayed with another pilot friend, Steve Henson, in North Carolina. He lives on an island, so he picked us up in his boat,... What an adventure. Steve was on the Cayman Islands trip, and when I sent out an email who else might be interested in flying supplies to Haiti, he immediately jumped on it and has now flow many more missions there. Thanks Steve !!
The intrepid pilots :-)
From left to right, Jordan Zaretsky, Tomoharu Nishino, myself, Glenn Chong, and Jim Parker, before we left El Higuero airport for the last mission out of Santiago.
N8050J in Santiago where we picked up this group of doctors and their supplies.
This is what a typical load looked like. Either lots of boxes and bags, or
1 or 2 passengers and a half dozen bags.
This KingAir actually crashed at Jacmel airport, actually minutes before I arrived there the very first time in January. The pilots must have misjudged the landing, hit hard and one of the landing gears collapsed. Luckily they spun out to the side of the runway, noone was hurt, except the plane was still there a month later, and it probably still is,...
Glenn and his Mooney.
And 3 of us with one of the Canadian soldiers controlling the ramp.
On this one mission, we actually had 5 planes flying. This was pretty amazing when we all arrived at the same time in Jacmel,...
After our last mission, we climbed high above Port-au-Prince northbound back towards the Bahamas. This was actually the closest I got to Port-au-Prince. You can see the airport and kind of on the left a little hard to see the presidential palace that partly collapsed.
Huge salt ponds on Great Inagua island.
Stella Maris airport, on the left is the customs building, on the right the FBO.
Some beautiful shots of the Bahamas islands.
At this island airport you definitely want to have your short field landings down,.. :-)
Flying these missions to Haiti was one of the most rewarding experiences in my flying career so far. I am very happy I was able to help and hope to be able to do even more in the future.
These missions would not have been possible without the incredible support from many friends, family, and colleagues.
There are some people I especially would like to thank:
- My wife, Elena, for encouraging me go on these missions :-)
- Katie and Mike Gollotto, Jack Cohen, and all the other doctors & members of Team Ange
- The Haitian Timoun Foundation, HTF for their support
- Jim Parker and his wife Margie for their amazing hospitality and support
- Tomoharu Nishino, Jordan Zaretsky, Glenn Chong, Steve Henson and many other pilots that jumped in and helped with their planes and piloting skills when needed
Team Ange and HTF have big plans going forward to help with the ongoing medical needs and rebuild what is necessary to help Jacmel and the people of Haiti back to some form of normality.
In order to do that, these organizations do require ongoing financial support.
If you can, please visit their websites to make a contribution and on the donation form, please designate the funds to 'Team Ange'.
Thank you very much, Jochen