First Responders: The DMAT Team (Fall '10)

Anesthesiologist and team member Judy O'Young documents her experiences deploying with the team and working surgical cases in Haiti in the initial days following the earthquake. Published in the Fall 2010 edition of The Permanente Journal.

Twilight on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: about 40 seconds of chaos. 7.0 magnitude. Buildings begin to crack and the sound makes people think of the gunfire that is all too frequent in the downtown area. For safety, people run inside. Buildings, shoddily constructed, crumple, trapping those inside. One of the best hotels, the Montana, on a verdant hillside overlooking the steaming plain of lowland Port-au-Prince, pancakes entombing more than 300 people. The air is thick with heat and the dust of concrete.

Afternoon on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 in Oakland, CA: news on the car radio tells me I will make my fourth trip to Haiti sooner than planned...