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C. Tannert Pinney

Right behind the comfortable accommodations the medical team enjoyed was this tent city — as large as several football fields.

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The most amazing thing was the singing.

Dr. C. Tannert Pinney, trying to make a difference in the misery of the people of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, kept being amazed by what he heard coming over the wall of the compound where he slept: songs and celebration.

A massive tent city was huddled back there, he said, as large as a couple of football fields and an absolute breeding ground of disease and desperation. so how could the inhabitants be singing?

“It was late at night, every night, between about 10 and 11 p.m., and in the morning, too. I thought, ‘My God, these people just lived through an earthquake.’ the resilience of the people was incredible to me.”

Equally incredible, though, was the poverty.

“The people of Haiti had nothing before this earthquake, and the earthquake wiped them out,” he said.

Pinney, a Hockinson resident and retired emergency room physician, traveled to Haiti in early February as part of an effort by Project Helping Hands, a growing nonprofit organization that started in Keizer, Ore. Medical professionals pay their own way to hot spots around the globe where they can set up charity clinics.

“We have a lot of people with great talent and big hearts who are willing to give up their time and their own funds to go on these trips,” he said.

Pinney said Project Helping Hands has recently grown to the point where it needs a board of directors — which he has joined. the group is nonpolitical and nonreligious, he said.

He’s been to Bolivia twice in recent years, he said, and when word spread that Project Helping Hands would head for Haiti in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake, he was eager to join that expedition, too. Twenty people went, he said — 10 from the Portland area and 10 more from elsewhere around the nation.

The group flew American Airlines, he said, which was kind enough to waive a $100-per-piece luggage fee for many plastic tubs of medical supplies being brought into Haiti.

They flew into the Dominican Republic on Feb. 6 and took a 10-hour van ride across the island, past the national border into Haiti and Port-au-Prince, the capital city and epicenter of the earthquake.

“As you cross the border, the difference between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is night and day,” he said. “Suddenly it’s all rutted roads and gravel and people living under tarps by the side of the road.” His sense was that this was partially earthquake aftermath, he said, but partially the underlying state of poverty of Haitian society.

“We got into Port-au-Prince. Man, it was like a war zone,” he said. “The buildings were all just completely collapsed and there’s no equipment, nothing to clean up the mess. There’s been very little work to reclaim all this. the rubble is just sitting there.”

He added that the government offered food vouchers to encourage people to clean up the rubble and sort it into collectable piles. “It was beginning to look somewhat better.”

Eventually, the Project Helping Hands group reached Port-au-Prince and the compound of its host, a Christian group called One World Mission. the accommodations were reasonably comfortable — real rooms, real beds, even a swimming pool. And just over the compound wall were thousands of people who had nothing but their prayers.

“They were living under tarps held up by sticks,” he said. “When they had homes, at least they had places to go to the bathroom. Now they didn’t even have that. it was very heart-wrenching.”

Injuries and poverty

The Project Helping Hands team set up a clinic in a rocky courtyard next to a dilapidated home, Pinney said. out front was a triage nurse and an interpreter. inside was a pharmacy tent, an intravenous treatment tent and a supply tent. Patients would line up outside, talk to the nurse and interpreter, and gain admittance to the help within.

“We put out that we needed interpreters, and of course the local folks are all looking for ways to make money,” Pinney said. “We ended up with 10 interpreters who stayed with us.”

While the medical team saw its fair share of festering earthquake wounds and injuries that had never received proper treatment, Pinney said, more of the ailments it faced were the ongoing, grinding effects of poverty and hunger — easy to treat in the short term but tough to prevent without a wholesale shift in conditions.

Uncontrolled high blood pressure. Untreated diabetes, both adult and juvenile-onset. Ear infections. Scabies and fungal infections — and secondary infections that festered after the primary ones were left untreated. Malnutrition and even typhoid — a disease that can rage where conditions are unsanitary.

“I’ve never seen it in this country,” Pinney said during a telephone interview from his Hockinson home. “But the streets are littered and the water isn’t clean.”

Lack of clean water and hygiene also had the Project Helping Hands seeing plenty of vaginal infections in young girls — not to mention the evidence of sex trafficking and rape.

“There was a girl who was repeatedly raped by a local boy and treated like a slave by her aunt,” Pinney said. “We were able to get her out of that situation.”

All in all, he said, the clinic treated more than 250 people per day — 30 percent to 35 percent of them younger than 18. it amounted to more than 1,400 people over the course of four whole days and two half days.

“There were so many ‘thank yous’ and smiles and ‘God bless yous,’” Pinney said. “It was very rewarding to see how grateful they were for what we did.”

He added that Project Helping Hands apparently scored points for cultural sensitivity — which is part of what had them invited back by One World Mission.

In contrast, one church-sponsored clinic appeared to be interested in treating large numbers of people quickly and in proselytizing, he said. another faith-based clinic decided to shrug off an official nationwide period of mourning and remembrance one Friday morning; Pinney said that group prayed together and decided God was on their side.

“Their interpreter just went ballistic. he wouldn’t work for them,” Pinney said.

The Project Helping Hands group, by contrast, took its time and talked at some length with each patient. Its host, One World Mission, guaranteed it continuing space and opportunities. “We’re going to have a regular presence in Haiti once or twice a year from now on,” Pinney said.

Pinney said he wanted to thank several generous donors to the Project Helping Hands mission to Haiti, including Lacamas Medical Clinic, which donated $1,000 in equipment, and Hockinson Middle School, which raised $6,300. he will be speaking to a school assembly, and presenting a slide show, at 9 a.m. Thursday.

“I was very impressed by the enormity of the response to Haiti by the people of the world and the people in this country,” he said.

But he won’t be going back to Haiti. next stop is an orphanage in western Kenya, he said.

“I have always wanted to do this,” said Pinney, 60. “Now that I’ve retired, my skills have given me the opportunity to do something good. It’s been very exciting and very fulfilling.”

Scott Hewitt: 360-735-04525; scott.hewitt@columbian.com.

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If Iran’s post-election uprising last summer was the world’s first “Twitter revolution,” the massive Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti was the first “Twitter disaster.” in a sign of how much the media landscape has changed since the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 or Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Twitter users around the world quickly turned to the massively popular microblogging site to read the latest news, express their sympathy, and learn how to help. Haiti quickly became the site’s top “trending topic,” edging out such favorites as #TeamConan and #nowTHATSghetto.

In an effort to catch the wave, established media sources like the News York Times and CNN used Twitter’s new list feature to set up aggregator feeds featuring the latest updates from the ground in Haiti. The tweeting fever did not let up in the days that followed. on Wednesday Jan. 20, more than a week after the original quake, a rush of Twitter activity following news of new aftershocks in Port-au-Prince actually shut down the site.

It’s clear that Twitter became a portal for people looking to connect about the tragedy — just click the #Haiti hashtag and then refresh after three seconds if you don’t believe me. but did Twitter actually replace other, more old-school media as a means for staying informed about events on the ground?

Unsurprisingly, instead of offering news, the vast majority of Haiti-related tweets seem to consist of either expressions of personal sympathy for the victims of the quake or links to news articles from other sites. Foreign reporters, including CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta, tweeted their impressions, but these were more of a supplement to their coverage than actual works of reporting. Foundations like Doctors Without Borders and CARE provided Twitter updates on their efforts, but these were of little interest to those not directly involved in the relief effort — who presumably had more reliable sources of information anyway.

Then there was the dark side. False rumors quickly began to spread on Twitter about relief initiatives that didn’t exist. a Twitter message stating that UPS was shipping free to Haiti and another that U.S. airlines were flying doctors to the country for free — when in fact, the country was completely closed to commercial flights in the days following the earthquake — led those companies to be deluged with phone calls and requests they couldn’t answer.

Twitter can occasionally be an effective means of organization — Tweets played a role in the online campaign to pressure the U.S. Air Force into opening the Port-au-Prince airport to aid flights — but they can just as often lead well-meaning readers astray, particularly when there’s celebrity involved. Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean quickly became one of the most popular Haiti-tweeters as he traveled to his home country to help with the relief effort and urged readers to donate to his Yele Foundation. (#Yele was a top trending topic in the immediate aftermath of the quake.) but concerns were quickly raised over the foundation’s financial irregularities and ability to deal with a problem the size of the earthquake. Many in the development community resented that Jean’s group was diverting funds away from groups better equipped to respond.

In fact, though it’s often said that new technologies like Twitter can empower individuals to communicate directly to a large audience, those who seemed to be benefiting most from it during this crisis were mainstream news outlets, who have the manpower to pick out the decent information from Twitter for more discerning readers; foundations and charities looking to raise money, whether deserving or not; and government agencies publicizing their own efforts.

If anything, the few tweets resembling news — generated by genuinely engaged tweeters like musician Richard Morse or the new York Times‘ Damien Cave — only pointed out the limitations of Twitter as a news medium. a tweet like Cave’s “Navy helicopters circling the embassy now. More military on the way. Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti — different, but all nation building?” is more of a teaser for his articles than an informative statement. Is there value in readers in the United States and Europe knowing that a particular store in downtown Port-au-Prince had been ransacked or a particular building in Jacmel had collapsed rather than waiting for a more comprehensive roundup of these events in the Times or on CNN?

In the past two decades, the news cycle has gone from the daily updates of newspapers to the up-to-the-minute coverage of cable news and the blogosphere to the up-to-the second updates of Twitter. It’s possible that we may have reached a point where information is being provided faster than users can process it, and the “news” ceases to inform at all.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia has donated $50 million in relief to Haiti to cope with the devastating earthquake that hit the country nearly two weeks ago, making it the largest donation from the Middle East to date, a Saudi foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.

More than 150,000 people have been buried by the government since the Jan. 12 quake struck, but that doesn’t count the bodies still in wrecked buildings, buried or burned by relatives or dead in outlying quake areas, according to government officials. The quake left some 700,000 people homeless in Port-au-Prince, mostly huddled under sheets, boards and plastic in open areas.

Israel sent a medical and rescue team in Haiti which the army said will finish its operations in the next few days and return to Israel by Thursday.

The official news agency of the United Arab Emirates, a Middle Eastern nation on the Persian Gulf, said a plane carrying 77 tons of basic relief supplies has been sent by the government to Haiti.

Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, wife of Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid, the ruler of Dubai, also flew to Port-Au-Prince last week on a “mercy mission” to deliver aid and rescue Arab families in the Haitian capital.

Dubai is one of seven sheikdoms making up the United Arab Emirates.

“Dubai may be far away, but we join in reaching out to Haitian families who have lost so much and are struggling just now to survive,” the princess, a U.N. “Messenger of Peace,” told the Emirates’ news agency.

Jordan sent six tons of relief supplies to Haiti shortly after the quake hit. a field hospital was also dispatched there to help treat survivors, including members of Jordan’s 700-strong, peacekeeping contingent in Haiti. Three Jordanian peacekeepers were killed and 23 wounded in the quake.

BY Simone Weichselbaum and Samuel Goldsmith
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Originally Published:Thursday, January 14th 2010, 12:37 PM
Updated: Thursday, January 14th 2010, 3:23 PM

Tiger Woods is considering a $3 million donation that would send doctors and supplies to Haiti, rap icon Russell Simmons told the Daily News.

“Tiger Woods is working on sending a mobile hospital with 50 EMTs to go set up a triage,” Simmons said Wednesday night.

Simmons and representatives from Wyclef Jean‘s Haitian relief organization Yele have asked Woods to support the effort. Simmons spokesman has been in touch with Woods managment team and they are “excited” about the idea.

“I am waiting to have the conversation [with Tiger] tomorrow morning,” Simmons’ spokesman Marcus Harris said. “I am hopeful that it is a yes.”

“I am just asking for his heart and his hand,” he said.

“Just to meet the needs of the people.”

Simmons wants celebrities and hip hop artists to join the relief effort in the wake of the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, killing untold thousands and destroying the city.

He reached out to several big names in the hip hop community to discuss producing a song for the country, he said. “Wyclef shouldn’t be the only face of this,” said Harris.

“If you can get a great song by a superstar it will be a cry for help. it will be an everlasting memory. a strong song will inspire.”

A Haitian relief effort would be Woods first foray into public life since he took an indefinite leave of absence from golf following a massive sex scandal.

The Tiger Woods Foundation has put millions toward education and support projects for children around the world since 1996.

sgoldsmith@nydailynews.com

(Springfield, MO) — the Springfield Convoy of Hope is already on the ground providing full scale disaster response.

The Convoy has a warehouse about 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince that was being used to help feed the hungry in Haiti.

Food and water immediately left the warehouse after the earthquake hit.

Teams will be flying out Thursday, Friday, and Monday with medical supplies.

The country director was in Haiti and survived the earthquake.

“Our country director from Haiti, who’s from here in Springfield, was already in Haiti when the earthquake happened,” says Jeff Nene, Senior Director of Communications. “He actually went through the earthquake and has stories about that as you can imagine. but he is spearheading our disaster response efforts there right now. We’ve already got food from that warehouse that we’re preparing to distribute among survivors and victims there in Haiti.”

If you would like to help with aid, Convoy asks for financial donations because Haiti is one of the most expensive countries they ship to.