By James Rincon
Pflag Reporter

Eighteen Central Texas doctors and nurses landed in Port au Prince, Haiti on Jan. 24 on a pair of private jets loaded with medical supplies to help the on-going aid efforts in the earthquake-ravaged country.

This local relief effort is a joint venture between 19 branches of the Hill Country Bible Church as well as Austin Samaritan, Hill Country clinical research, Synthes Medical Equipment and Compassion animal hospital.

“Our situation is literally evolving moment by moment,” said HCBC Communications Director Amy Baker. “We have a team of physicians who are using their network in the Central Texas area to either buy at low cost or get donated medical supplies and equipment to fly down there.
“We have identified two charter planes … because they are private charter jets, they can fly into Port au Prince, unload and just get right out of there and get out of the way. They don’t have to be refueled, and that’s how we got permission to actually get them on the ground there to deliver needed supplies.”

Cargo planes carrying 22 tons of donated medical supplies from area medical centers such as the Travis County Medical Society and Seton Medical Center will follow the jets later this week, Baker said in an e-mail.

Before any planes left the ground for Port au Prince, a five-member team of HCBC members flew to the Dominican Republic and drove to Haiti survey the area and relay specifications as to exactly the kind of aid that was most needed.

Ray Lindner attends HCBC Pflugerville and is one of the five men who went to the island on the reconnaissance mission.

“Ray is the president of the national coast guard association. He has experience in military logistics. He has a distribution background, large airport management. So they’re heading down there to try to get some eyes on the area and see what can be done, try to help out with logistics and then try to coordinate with efforts back here,” said Roy Olmstead, HCBC Pflugerville treasurer.

HCBC Northwest member Bob King is leading the fine-man team to support Mission of Hope Haiti, which consists of Lindner, Amy Baker’s husband Wayne Baker, a licensed professional counselor with expertise in trauma work, Matthew Flippen and Jonathan Patton.

“[Mission of Hope Haiti] has been down there for 12 years, and since the Earthquake hit they have distributed 700,000 meals to people because they already had this amazing infrastructure in place. They also provide medical support, education, they have an orphanage, and so it was for that reason that we decided to partner with that organization,” Amy Baker said.

Baker said HCBC Northwest has contributed money from its reserve funds to the relief project, but monetary donations will help defray fuel costs for the air transports. Contributions can be made directly to Mission of Hope Haiti through missionofhopehaiti.org.

“Part of what this team is doing while they’re down there in the next week or so is trying to identify the longterm needs,” she said.

Preliminary reports indicate a future need for volunteers with construction, medical and physical therapy skills.

“One thing that’s been mentioned in just the sheer number of people who have been needing to have amputations that later they hope to fit with prostesus,” Amy Baker said. “They will need skilled volunteers to provide physical therapy for those people to literally help people get back on their feet… as well as people to help do basics.

When Katrina hit we had teams of people who didn’t really know much about holding a hammer, that learned a lot real fast.”

Those interested can get updates from Lindner and other volunteers on hcbcpf.com/haiti-relief-blog as they blog from Port au Prince.