As news spread locally about Tuesday’s devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti, the volunteers with Medical Missionaries were scrambling to organize the steps they will take to help the estimated 3 million Haitians affected by the disaster.

Founded in 1997, Medical Missionaries works to provide medical services to the poor in impoverished and developing countries. Since its beginning, the main focus of the organization has been on the communities along the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In 2007, the organization opened a clinic in Thomassique, Haiti, which serves more than 125,000 people.

The organization plans to send supplies and an additional team of 10 doctors and nurses into Haiti. Because of the chaos in the country and the current lack of operating communication systems, Medical Missionaries is working together with other organizations from around the country, including the Catholic Medical Mission board in New York.

“We’ve been working overnight getting together to find people,” said Peter Dirr, a member of Medical Missionaries’ board of directors.

Since the port at Port-au-Prince will likely be unreachable due to the quake, volunteers will either have to work with the military to get to the port or travel on land from the Dominican Republic to get there.

According to Dirr, Medical Missionaries may ship their supplies into Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic and then drive the four and a half hours to Banica, before crossing the border and driving an additional two to three hours to Thomassique. From there, the staff of the clinic will be able to ascertain whether or not the supplies and the medical team will be most useful there or closer to Port-au-Prince, another three hours away.

“It’s a lengthy trip, but it would be worth it if it means we can help,” Dirr said.

Medical Missionaries has heavy-duty military trucks and storage units that will be used for the transportation of the supplies across the country. In addition, Dr. Gilbert Irwin, the organization’s president, said he has already wired $5,000 to the clinic to go toward fuel costs for the trip.

Though details of when the shipments and teams would be sent out were still vague, Irwin said that departure was expected to happen within a week of the quake.

At the end of the month, Medical Missionaries will send a surgical team to the area. This team already was scheduled to be in Haiti for a week, performing as many surgeries for the locals as possible. Now they may end up performing surgeries not in the clinic but in another location closer to Port-au-Prince, where the need may be more urgent. The surgeons know that, and Irwin said they are prepared to do whatever is needed.

At the Medical Missionaries clinic in Thomassique, the staff members could feel the tremors of the quake, but suffered no real physical damage to speak of. Instead, the consequences for the clinic will come by way of lost family members and friends, as well as a likely increased demand in medical services when the many newly homeless people of Port-au-Prince return to the rural villages.

“When the dust settles, a lot of people will return to their villages in rural areas, because there’s nothing left where they are (in Port-au-Prince),” Irwin said. “There’s a potential that we’ll have an influx of people and that would put tremendous pressure on our hospital. We’re trying to develop the logistics to deal with all that now.”

No matter what happens, Irwin said that the devastation of this earthquake will stay with Haiti for years to come.

“The problem is two-fold,” Irwin said. “There’s the recovery and rescue of the people who are trapped, that will be going on for a few days. But what happened is going to take years to recover from — all those buildings that have collapsed. These people had meager places to stay to start with and now they have nothing. A couple million people suddenly need housing and food and water and the basic necessities. It’s going to take a long time to make any sense of it.

“It’s the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” Irwin said. “There wasn’t much to begin with and now there’s less than zero. Less than zero is a difficult number to work with. This is a devastating problem for these people.”

The disaster was painful for both Dirr and Irwin to hear about, since they have watched the people of Haiti survive so much tragedy over the years.

“It’s very sad that the people in Haiti seem to be confronted with one disaster after another,” Dirr said. “It was only in October 2008 when they experienced four hurricanes in six weeks. Portions of the country are still recovering from that and they are very much the same people affected by this. It’s just terrible to see.”

“These are people who have so little and work at survival on a daily basis and they are hit with another major disaster on top of everything,” Irwin said. “I just feel so much compassion and empathy for them. They are basically good people who want to live and take care of their families. Historically and currently, they seem to be constantly beat into the ground.”

Despite all the damage the earthquake has caused, Dirr says he is not discouraged that the efforts of Medical Missionaries and other like-minded organizations have gone to waste.

“It’s not a matter of just dumping money down there to build things,” he said. “It’s a matter of working with the people and helping them help themselves. Because of that help we’ve given, they’ll be better able to recover from this earthquake. Even though some of the things we’ve built might have been destroyed, the people will still be better equipped to recover because they know how to build things and take care of themselves more.”

For those willing to help, Irwin said Medical Missionaries will take any and all contributions, as the disaster efforts now underway are currently beyond the organization’s budget.

How to help

Monetary donations can be made to Medical Missionaries on its Website, medmissionaries.org, or by sending a check to Medical Missionaries, 9590 Surveyor Court, Manassas, VA 20110.

The organization is also looking for donations of summer clothing and shoes, daily necessities like liquid soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, and medical supplies like bandages, wheelchairs, walkers and medicine.

Donations can be dropped off at the Medical Missionaries warehouse, located on the grounds of Linton Hall School in Bristow. To schedule a drop-off time, call Peter Dirr at 571/239-6380.