Telluride paramedic flies to Haiti after the August 14 earthquake | News

Last month, on August 14, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti. Two days later on August 16, Telluride resident Heidi Attenburger received a call from Team Rubicon, the disaster relief organization she had volunteered with, asking her to pack her bags and fly to Haiti as soon as possible.

The paramedic at the Telluride Fire Protection District, Attenburger rose to the occasion and attempted to catch a 10 a.m. flight from Montrose the next day.

“It’s all very stressful,” Attenburger said. “I have to change all the shifts of the paramedics and find people to cover my shift and pack my bags, not knowing where I’m going or what I’m doing.”

While working with Team Rubicon, Attenberger became a professional packing for international disaster flights. Typically, the disaster areas you visit are hot and humid climates where heavy jackets and layers are not required.

“You can’t bring anything you don’t want to lose or get dirty. Clothes will be damaged along the way,” Attenburger said.

One of the first things Attenberger packs is her Team Rubicon jerseys. Over the years, the Rubicon team has grown exponentially, and they haven’t had enough T-shirts to hand out to all of their team, which now has more than 100,000 people from all over the country.

The Rubicon team got its start in 2010 after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on January 12, 2010. That’s when two Marines, Jake Wood and William McNulty, decided to act.

Gathering supplies and volunteers, a small group of veterans, first responders and medical professionals were deployed to Haiti in the days following the earthquake,” according to the Team Rubicon website. “From this initial process, a larger organization has grown, one committed to helping disadvantaged communities affected by disaster.”

Last month, Attenburger traveled with the Rubicon team to Haiti, where the process and initial organization began.

“It was really nice to be back in Haiti after 11 years with the team and another earthquake,” Attenburger said.

During the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, an estimated 250,000 people died and at least 300,000 others were injured. While the last earthquake was twice as powerful in 2010, the death toll was much lower. This disparity is partly due to the fact that the epicenter was 78 miles from the capital, Port-au-Prince, in the densest rural areas of Haiti. According to the United Nations, the death toll has exceeded 2,000 and the number of injuries has exceeded 9,900.

As Attenburger sat on the plane preparing to land in the disaster area, she tried to feel the devastation on the ground, but in Haiti, it wasn’t easy.

“The previous earthquake destroyed a lot that has yet to be repaired,” Attenburger said. “This earthquake was not as widespread as the earthquake in 2010, so you can’t see things from the air. One house would have been completely flattened among the others that were still standing.”

After landing in Port-au-Prince, Attenburger and her team boarded a US military Black Hawk helicopter to reach Lee Cayes. Les Cayes is a small town on the southwest coast of Haiti and was one of the communities hardest hit by the August earthquake. Attenburger explained that the team could not get into the cars “because the only roads to rural areas were controlled by Haitian gangs”.

At Les Chey, they stayed in an orphanage run by an American Christian group that had an extra bedroom for guests.

Attenburger’s role during the two-week assignment was to support Haitian doctors at a local hospital, specifically in the pediatric unit. The “emergency room” the hospital set up was “not really a room; it was an emergency triage area,” Attenburger recalls.

When the 2021 earthquake struck, Haiti was still recovering from the earthquake 11 years earlier. In addition to natural disasters, their president, Jovenel Moss, was assassinated at his home on July 7, leaving the nation in political turmoil. In hospital, Attenburger witnessed the impact of years of turmoil and devastation on the people of Haiti.

“Haitians consider this to be exactly what their lives are like now,” Attenburger said. “When I’m here, I get so upset about the smallest thing. It helps to put things in perspective. They have to wait forever in queues because that’s part of their life. There were very few of us and a lot of them needed help and treatment, but no one complained” .

Volunteering in Haiti and her countless trips with Team Rubicon presented Attenberger with plenty of challenges. However, because of her background, Attenburger was willing to take on most of these obstacles. Over the past decade, Attenburger has served as an assistant paramedic in the Telluride Fire Protection District.

“Being a paramedic helps you do this in a physically challenging environment. The big challenge is the unexpected, and that’s what I do in my daily life as well. I never know what to expect in the next hour or sometimes the next 10 minutes. It’s what it’s like to go through a process Team Rubicon where you often have no idea what to expect,” she said.

Susan Lilly, the information officer at the front of the fire protection zone, echoed the sentiment.

“The nature of EMS requires that paramedics be ready for any type of call at any time,” Lilly said. “We’re all training to be physically and mentally prepared and our equipment ready for this next call.”

According to Lilly, the field of emergency medicine and what Attenberger does with Team Rubicon are similar, but also very different.

“You have to be a selfless and caring person to do either. But the difference in what Heidi does is that she performs in adverse and possibly unstable environments with bad conditions,” Lilly said.

Attenberger admits she couldn’t do what she’s doing without the support of her team at Telluride.

“I couldn’t do that if they didn’t cover my shifts when I’m gone,” Attenburger said. “I know it puts a strain on my fellow paramedics, but I want them all to know that by the time I left, we’ve seen over 1,000 patients. If I save some lives and maybe some limbs, I think it’s worth it.”

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