Gloucester nurse recounts Haiti evacuation (updated)

Sarah Hackett, the 83-year-old Gloucester nurse who has worked as a volunteer in Haiti for 17 straight years, is safely back in the United States. She reluctantly agreed to be evacuated on Monday, and made it to Miami early on Tuesday. She has sent a heart-wrenching letter to friends describing the hardships and humanity she saw in Port-au-Prince on her way home (see full text below).

I wrote about Sarah and her work in a Globe article in November -- noting that she was not going to spend Thanksgiving in the beloved family home in the Annisquam section of Gloucester that her ancestors built in 1829. Instead, she was up before dawn, and again heading to Haiti for another season of work with the prize-winning non-profit group, Haiti Projects Inc., that she founded in Fond des Blancs, about 75 miles west of Port-au-Prince.


(Sarah Hackett, pictured in her Gloucester home in November. Photo by John Blanding, Globe Staff)

In the same town of Fond des Blancs, Massachusetts residents Nannette and Fred Canniff also have been working for decades to build up an impressive community hospital, St. Boniface Hospital. Nannette Canniff founded and still heads the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation of Randolph. Nannette, Fred and their daughter-in-law Linda were in Fond des Blancs, along with Sarah Hackett, when the quake hit. They were able to leave Haiti a few days ago and head home, via the Dominican Republic.

The St. Boniface Hait Foundation team, headed by Conor Shapiro, who is from Concord, Mass. , presses on helping hundreds of quake victims who fled from Port-au-Prince for Fond des Blanc. The hospital is also preparing to offer post-operative care to victims who underwent surgery on the US Navy hospital ship, the USNS Comfort.

 Shapiro, 28, has a master's in public health from Boston University and has been working in Haiti for more than six years. His father, Eric Shapiro, said yesterday that Conor Shapiro went straight back to work in Fond des Blancs after coordinating the evacuation of Hackett and his wife and daughter.

Thanks to people like Hackett, the Canniffs and Shapiro, Massachusetts has been making a quiet but powerful contribution to one very poor corner of Haiti for a very long time.

Here's Hackett's complete account of the evacuation, forwarded to me by Jim Tew, who is on the Haiti Projects Inc. board:

    

Dear Friends,
        
     From the safety of Miami I am sending you a message of appreciation to you who have shown such an outpouring of love and concern for my well being in Haiti.

     I hasten to tell you that I am well and have recovered, at least outwardly, from the anguish of leaving Haiti. I thought that, all things considered, it was prudent to grasp the offer to be evacuated quickly when I had the chance. I am glad to be back in the USA where we are privileged beyond measure. However, it is a powerful culture shock filled with sadness.

     We left Fond des Blancs early Monday morning driving very fast. I saw the sights of terrible devastation along the road and especially while entering Port au Prince. There were flattened buildings on every side and people huddled in tents. We went past the airport with no incident and turned into the UN headquarters complex where we saw the first of the huge medical tents set up. There must have been at last 200 people laying on cots, many with IVs running. Exhausted doctors and nurses walked among the cots tending to the sick and wounded. It reminded one of Civil War pictures of the acres of wounded lying on the ground suffering with no painkillers.

     In an adjacent tent exhausted surgeons were operating- mostly amputations of crushed limbs. We were told that the morphine had just arrived. It was there across from these UN operations that we spent a total of 13 hours under some trees by the side of the road while Conor Shapiro, the new head of St Boniface Hospital, was trying to arrange transport. It was the site of plenty of action; search and rescue teams from all around the world were arriving, trucks from the World Food Program, from the FAO, CRS, Children First and many others passed continuously, hundreds of them. We saw back hoes and earth movers leaving the compound in the daylight to search the rubble.

     I was waiting for this guy Hank whom I somehow believed when he said to me,  " I have a plane and it is returning from Miami with supplies about 8 pm and you will be my first passenger on the return trip - about 10 o'clock." Some were skeptical but somehow I believed him. After Hank collected three critical children headed for Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami there were a few seats left on his corporate jet. We were driven to the airport which is usually so deserted with only an occasional AA plane on the tarmac. Here we saw several thousand people gathered by the gates all looking for a way out of Port au Prince. We saw huge transport planes bringing supplies and personnel from all over the world. We ran to the small jet, were greeted in elegant fashion, the patients were made comfortable by their attendant doctors. I was offered a double scotch.

     On arrival in Miami we went by bus to the hospital where I served as interpreter for the hospital doctors receiving our children. When all was under control I thanked Hank for his kindness, took a taxi to a luxurious hotel in Key Biscayne, an offering from Conor's uncle. I had come from the misery and suffering of Haiti with the clothes on my back and my computer in my shoulder bag to the most luxurious hotel in the US . It was 2:30 in the morning Tuesday when I called my family to say I was safe.

      I still struggle with this contrast as I write you. I am infinitely sad to have had to leave my work in the middle of things but at the same time I feel very grateful for the many blessings poured on me.

     With many thanks and kind regards to you all,

     Sarah