Life is Like a Tree

By Dan Stoneking
January 2010

I’m sitting in a cubicle in the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Many ceiling tiles are missing or hanging down, with lights and cables dangling among them. The paintings on the walls are cracked, broken or askew. And each cubicle is littered with files and folders that scattered upon the January 12 earthquake’s impact. This cubicle belongs to Stephane. It is likely that I will never meet her. She evacuated. But from a quick glance across her work area I can see that she has been recognized often for her service and she is clearly a woman of faith. Still pinned upon her cubicle wall is this quote, written across a background photograph of a Mapou tree:

“Life to me is like a tree, if it doesn’t take its time to bloom during spring, it’ll be too late in fall… there will only be the trunk and the branches left….” – Dominique M. H. Franck Jean, 1992

Haiti forests are disappearing at an enormous rate each year. The Haitians are investing in their trees. They are investing in themselves. FEMA does the same thing when we deploy to disasters. Only through deploying can we bloom, like the tree, and become true emergency managers. Each deployment offers so many opportunities to learn and grow.

Tragedy

Those who don’t deploy will never meet the likes of Jim, Sarla and Rick. They were rescued together from the rubble that once was the Montana Hotel. When I met them, Jim was wearing bandages on his head and both hands. Sarla still had debris tangled in her hair. Rick walked out of the gap formed by the rescuers without a scratch. A friend of theirs from the same rescue rested near by on a stretcher with urgent doctor care around the clock as they awaited evacuation.

I know at least two individuals who were trapped that sadly had to have a limb amputated in order to be freed. I saw the man who lost his leg. Later, I watched on the flight line while rescuers, doctors, and a pilot argued over the fate of a man nearby on his stretcher suffering from burns to 50% of his body and the further misfortune to have lost his identification. His brother negotiated on his behalf. They decided to transport him by truck to the Dominican Republic. A day after that I met Netty who told me about her good friend who was trapped. Netty texted back and forth with her for a couple of days as responders struggled through mountains of concrete to reach her. By the second day her friend’s cell phone died. Soon after, so did her friend. “They kept working hard though,” she told me. “At least her family will get her body back.”

From every tragedy, and ever deployment, there is hope. I heard one search and rescue team labored for 17 hours and got the survivor out alive. The next day another went 24 hours straight and achieved the same reward. And on the fifth day after the earthquake shook the city, one of the rescue teams found and saved a three-year-old little girl.

Logistics

Each deployment brings its own unique logistical challenges as well. I forgot a razor. So I’m growing a beard. There is one shower for more than a thousand responders. I’m putting the shower wipes my wife gave me to good use. I didn’t have a sleeping bag so on the third day I stopped by Fairfax County Task Force Urban Search and Rescue and talked to the guys who flew in with me. They hooked me up.

There is also a very common experience in each disaster of gradually regaining communications. Those who have not deployed really can’t have a full appreciation of that experience. Those who have deployed know what it’s like for someone in Washington D.C. to question their progress even when they felt like the lone ranger, doing seven jobs and all without even a semaphore flag to communicate. This disaster was no different. For the first 12 hours I lugged around an emergency communication kit that took 20 minutes to set up each time in the blazing sun at the only outdoor outlet 250 yards away from the operations center, so I could provide status updates to headquarters. So when I got text messaging to work, the AT&T technician became my new best friend and I felt like I could accomplish anything. When email started working the next day it was like a birthday present. The only draw back there is that routine work emails keep coming right along with the disaster ones. This morning my blackberry phone rang. At first, I didn’t recognize what that strange sound was. Of course, an hour later the phone stopped working again, but I know it will be back tomorrow. And we will keep getting faster at getting things done.

Coordination

Coordination can be messy in the field. Some folks are survivors at the same time as being responders, some are territorial, and some are tired. I’m learning the value of relationships. When you come across someone you met in a previous disaster, the process speeds up. Lacey and I met and worked together in American Samoa. Mark and I worked Hurricane Ike last year in Houston. There is a bond. Still, this one is different. We all began four weeks worth of malaria pills and updated our shots. Another challenge here is getting from the embassy to the airport and back. The motor pool is stretched too thin. Darryl and I hitched a ride on the back of a truck on one trip holding on to the cargo straps that tied down 11,000 pounds of supplies as we careened down poorly paved streets. Probably won’t do that again. There are several agencies from around the world. I know I will see some of them again one day. And we will coordinate better.

Humanity

But the main reason everyone should deploy is to bloom during spring. To experience the humanity and the spirit to overcome that only comes when you toil side-by-side and meet the survivors we serve face-to-face. Like Bea. She works at the embassy. She is a survivor. Her mom made a rice dish for us to share and every evening Bea makes sure we have coffee ready for the next morning. She smiles most of the time. Then there is the woman with braided hair (I wish I knew her name) who brought us all a tray of fresh papaya and pineapple. Each piece was sliced with care and decoratively displayed on a doily centered in the platter.

One of the guys here, Mervyn, lost his home. So his chocolate brown Labrador, Bruno, stays in the storage closet at night. In the morning, he is our alarm clock. I have the morning shift walking Bruno. He has a lot of energy. I don’t think anyone told him about the earthquake. He wants to play.

Today

Today we had a memorial service. I think it added some hopeful solemnity that we came together to share that on Martin Luther King Day, survivors and responders alike. The Chaplain quoted from Ecclesiastes. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn….” This was our moment to mourn. Together we will heal and we will build up.   We finished the service by singing Amazing Grace together. And that’s when most people cried. That’s when strangers hugged. And then we returned to the business of recovery.

Everyone in FEMA should wear the FEMA blue and deploy… to experience the tragedy, logistics, coordination, and humanity. If we don’t take that time to bloom, it will be too late and we will only be left with branches.