Hills area physicians in Haiti scramble to help wounded RCJournal Post January 13, 2010 Dr Bryan den Hartog, along with his father, two sons, and another area physician, Dr. Terry Graber, were part of a medical missions team that arrived in Port-au-Prince 24 hours before it was hit by the 7.0-magnitude quake. (Courtesy photo)
Two Black Hills physicians who arrived in Haiti Monday on an annual mission trip were suddenly thrust into helping victims of a devastating earthquake which has potentially killed tens of thousands.
Dr. Bryan Den Hartog, a Rapid City orthopedic surgeon at Black Hills Orthopedic & Spine Center, and Dr. Terry Graber, a family physician at Custer Regional Hospital, treated trauma patients Wednesday at a hospital in Port-au-Prince, 10 miles from the epicenter of a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck this small impoverished island country Tuesday. The quake occurred 6 miles underground and included 10 aftershocks, two of which registered magnitudes of 5.0, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It is the largest earthquake to strike Haiti in two centuries.
All team members for Mission to Haiti, a Christian ministry headquartered in Sheldon, Iowa, were safe, according to Taylor Den Hartog, who has been in communication with his father and other members of his extended family on the trip. Taylor's brothers, Addison, 22, and Jordan, 23, as well as a cousin and their grandfather, Gene Den Hartog, of Sheldon, are also in Haiti.
"Everybody's safe," Taylor said Wednesday morning.
Addison is using a laptop computer to stay in touch with family in Rapid City through e-mail and Skype, an Internet video chat site. Cell phone communication is impossible because of cell tower damage. Taylor, a senior at Stevens High School, said his brother had difficulty explaining his first earthquake experience.
"My brother said he just about fell over. It took him a while to realize what was going on. He said the whole earth was rocking back and forth and that he could barely stand up straight," he said.
The mission team is staying at a compound about 10 minutes from the Port-au-Prince airport. It was damaged in the earthquake, but no one inside was killed, Taylor said. At least five earthquake victims brought into the compound for medical attention died there.
Originally, the group intended to spend a week in Haiti doing medical work in numerous outlying clinics and building a medical facility inside the compound.
In the aftermath of the earthquake, doctors Den Hartog and Graber transferred earthquake victims to a hospital about 30 minutes away from their compound and spent Wednesday performing emergency surgical procedures there, Taylor said.
Marcia Graber admits she has had conflicting feelings. She wanted her husband to return home to safety but also knew he needed to stay to assist with the extraordinary medical needs the country now faces.
"I'm sure those guys are working as hard as they possibly can to help," she said.
Terry Graber, a veteran of numerous medical mission trips, is on his first trip to Haiti. Den Hartog was making his fifth mission trip to there. The group from his hometown in Iowa travels to Haiti annually.
The government is working to get volunteer missionaries out of the country and replace them with military personnel and professional relief workers. The Rapid City group might have been able to get out of Haiti as early as Wednesday night, if they were able to get transport to the Dominican Republic, where they'll fly to the U.S., Taylor said. Their status was unknown as of news deadline.
Eight people from Hot Springs have been on the island of La Gonave off the coast of Haiti since Jan. 7, as part of another medical missions team. The Dakotas Conference of the United Methodist Church team includes Jan Speirs, Cecile Tays, Dr. Garry Strauser, Jeanne Wyatt, Debbie Okerson, Cathy Nelson, Anne Zwetzig and Paula Hofer, all of Hot Springs. The team felt the earthquake on the island about 50 miles from Port-au-Prince but didn't suffer any injuries, according to a conference spokesman. A spokesman at United Churches in Hot Springs said that as of Wednesday, the team expects to complete its trip as planned and return to South Dakota on Jan. 19, if commercial air travel is restored to Port-au-Prince
If people are interested in giving to the relief efforts in Haiti, the two agencies BHOSC is familiar with, and can verify are legitimate, are www.missiontohaiti.org and www.samaritanspurse.org .