The Foreign Service Journal, April 2010

28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 1 0 Haiti, we helped evacuate over 12,000 people. While serving the evacuation effort in both countries, I was impressed by how much entry-level officers’ initiative, lead- ership and teamwork contributed. During this crisis, all hands were es- sential to success, and the newest officers rose to the occasion. I was honored to be among them. J. Brett Hernandez Vice Consul T HE T ALE OF THE T ARMAC I was talking on the phone with my mother, who lives in Germany, when the earthquake hit, and my building started shaking. Just 36 hours later, I arrived in Port-au- Prince as part of the first wave of TDYers from Santo Domingo. Our job was to help evacuate peo- ple at the airport. We were greeted there by three or four consular offi- cers, a small Air Force ground crew and about 8,000 Haitian-Ameri- cans seeking evacuation. Though still standing, the ter- minal was completely destroyed, so we created a small “base camp” for the consular officers on the tarmac where the planes arrived hourly. At first, it was nothing more than a designated spot on the landing strip with a few boxes of food ra- tions and cases of water. We con- structed crude restraining barriers to instill some order and salvaged a few chairs to mark our territory. There were still kinks in the evacuation process, so for the first few days we approached the pilots personally and literally begged them to carry passengers back to their des- tinations. Some agreed; others refused. The process was chaotic and the noise was deafening. We had nothing in the beginning—no power, computers, radios or BlackBerrys; not even earplugs. We entered manifests by hand in a notebook — “Name. Passport number. Date of birth. Next?” — 1,500 times a day. At night, we took the manifests to the embassy, entered them into a spreadsheet and sent them off. The more than 20-hour days were long, hot and ar- duous. Despite eating three 3,000-calorie Meals-Ready- to-Eat per day, we all lost weight. Due to the limited amount of food and water, we were not al- lowed to hand out sup- plies, and it broke our hearts to say no. Crowd control was a major issue; it was exhausting trying to care for the young, elderly and injured, while readying peo- ple for evacuation. We were on our feet for hours and quickly became hoarse from trying to direct traffic above the noise of the planes. If you skipped a meal or forgot to drink a bottle of water, you quickly found your- self at the medical unit for dehydration or dizziness. F O C U S In the two short weeks “Team Santo Domingo” was in Haiti, we successfully evacuated over 12,000 people. TDYers from Santo Domingo set up a makeshift consular “base camp” on the Port-au-Prince Air- port tarmac with a couple of boxes of food rations and some water, where they processed thousands of American-citizen evacuees. They started with noth- ing: no power, computers, radio or BlackBerrys — not even earplugs! Crowd control was a major issue. Mark Hernandez