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Local medical team treated kids, infants in Haiti

27 members of a disaster assistance team based in Dayton return from aid mission after quake.

Paula Reams, of Springboro (right), a nursing instructor at the Kettering College of Medical Arts and member of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team, gets a hug from DMAT supervising nurse Sandi Hurley at Dayton International Airport on Thursday, Feb. 4. Check out more photos of the team's return from Haiti at DaytonDailyNews.com. Staff photo by Jan Underwood

Jan Underwood Paula Reams, of Springboro (right), a nursing instructor at the Kettering College of Medical Arts and member of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team, gets a hug from DMAT supervising nurse Sandi Hurley at Dayton International Airport on Thursday, Feb. 4. Check out more photos of the team's return from Haiti at DaytonDailyNews.com. Staff photo by Jan Underwood

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Photos: Medical team returns from Haiti

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By Anthony Gottschlich, Staff Writer Updated 12:54 AM Friday, February 5, 2010

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, flattened buildings, orphaned children and decimated families dominate the landscape, but there are few tears in this earthquake-shattered Caribbean nation, said members of a local disaster relief team that returned from Haiti on Thursday evening, Feb. 4.

“I never saw anyone crying about their situation, unless they were in (physical) pain,” said Bill White, a communications specialist with the Dayton-based Disaster Medical Assistance Team. “They were sad when they talked about it, but the state of people in perpetual problems like that, I think, they just go on, a strength we would probably be hard to duplicate.”

White and his wife, Janet, a nurse at Kettering Medical Center, were among 27 members of the disaster team that deployed to Haiti on Jan. 25 to help in the international relief effort spawned by the Jan. 12 earthquake. The team of local doctors, nurses and emergency medical service workers cared for more than 1,000 sick and injured Haitians during its week at a field hospital it set up near the Thebaud River.

“We saw on an average day a couple hundred patients a day — a lot of pediatric patients, a lot of malnourished infants that had lost their mothers and weren’t able to breastfeed any more,” DMAT Commander William Devir said at the Dayton International Airport.

Devir’s team is part of the National Disaster Medical System, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Preparedness and Emergency Operations.

A paramedic and captain with the Washington Twp. Fire Department, Devir said his team has responded to Hurricanes Francis, Ike and Katrina, but this was the first time it served internationally.

“It’s the worst I’ve seen,” he said. “I’m not a veteran, but I suspect this is as close to war as I’ve ever been.”

White, a biomedical electronics technician at Kettering hospital, said he won’t be able to shake the experience for a long time.

“You kind of wonder what’s going to happen to them now that we’ve gone,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we can expect the best.”

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