'A sense of sadness that stays with me'

Driving up a mountain from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to the town of Mirebalais this month, Carolyn Kruger wasn't overly concerned about all the bumps. Kruger, a nurse who has worked in more than 45 countries, knew that many of Haiti's roads were in poor condition, and so, she said, she shrugged off a nagging thought that the ride was unusually rocky.

As the car approached Mirebalais, she noticed people hurrying from their homes. Perhaps it's market day, she recalled thinking. Only when Kruger saw panic on the faces, and after her Haitian colleagues asked what was happening, did she learn that an earthquake had hit the island.

Kruger, of Purcellville, is a Washington-based maternal and child health specialist with World Vision, a Christian charity. She and several U.S. co-workers had arrived in Haiti the day before the earthquake for a routine visit to World Vision's operations there.

Kruger's first task upon learning of the earthquake was to tell her husband, Wally Johnson, that she was safe. During an interview at her Washington office the next week, Kruger held her "trusty cellphone" in her hand.

"I'll never give it up," she said.

Two Haitian doctors with whom Kruger was traveling also reached their families in Port-au-Prince before their cellphones lost reception. The doctors said that, for the moment, everyone was safe but that the damage was catastrophic. The men decided to head back down the mountain to find their wives and children, leaving Kruger and the other Americans to continue their planned trip to Mirebalais.

Although she has worked in situations as tense as the Tiananmen Square protests, Kruger said she is not trained in disaster response and was not equipped to work in Port-au-Prince. But, in Mirebalais, she and her colleagues -- a nutrition specialist and a World Vision food program officer -- could take one patient at a time as victims arrived from the capital.

They immediately took stock of the supplies available at the charity's Mirebalais office -- antibiotics, ointments, IV kits and bandages -- and delivered them to the local hospital.

Kruger "could tell they were running out" when she saw the patients' thinly wrapped broken bones, she said. The number of crush injuries was overwhelming, and the hospital staff was trying to make the casting material go as far as possible.

In an e-mail to her family, Kruger recorded the scene at the hospital:

"Patients were lying on boards with broken limbs, swollen faces and bleeding ankles, hands and feet wrapped with whatever they could find. . . . The ward was filled with patients . . . so many you couldn't walk through. . . . The wounds were the worst I have seen in my nursing experience. . . . It was amazing to me that these people could tolerate the pain that they did."

The hospital was generally equipped for only basic primary care, minor surgery and emergency needs.