CRUDEM_25

Then, through a chain of social networking correspondences, board member Carol Fipp

made an online introduction to a Coast Guard commander stationed off Haiti. Commander

James Spotts and Executive Officer, LCDR Michael P. Fisher of the USCGC TAHOMA answered

the call for assistance and began the transport of patients from Port au Prince to Milot. With

few safe landing spots in the Haitian capital, mountainous terrain between the locations and

treacherous mountain air currents around Milot, transport was rife with

difficulties and could only be safely conducted during daylight hours.

Still, the USCGC TAHOMA crew pulled off miracle after miracle as they

performed their life-saving missions over the next many weeks and

months. Later, CRUDEM/Hôpital Sacré Coeur gratefully dubbed them the

first of many “Angels of Milot.”

Stephen Fletcher, M.D., a general and vascular

surgeon, Rick Pitera, M.D., an anesthesiologist,

and their team from St. Barnabas Medical

Center in New Jersey arrived on Friday, January

15. Fletcher recalls, “A Coast Guard helicopter

had landed in a soccer field next to the

residence at about the same time and brought

six seriously injured patients to the hospital.”

Dr. Pitera notes that several patients “were on the verge of death;

there was a man whose crushed arm had been in a tourniquet

for four days; another had been trapped in a building and had to

be hacked out by Haitian doctors.” Dr. Pitera broke down as he

remembered his next patient, a seven-year-old-girl orphaned by

the disaster. She was the same age as Dr. Pitera’s own daughter,

and he wept as he recalled the amputation of her foot. “The

odor upon entering the hospital was unbearable,’ said Fletcher.

“We immediately assessed these patients and that afternoon

and evening we had to perform three amputations that were

lifesaving.”