[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 10 (Tuesday, January 26, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H333-H334]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             U.S. AND WORLD RESPONDS TO HAITI'S EARTHQUAKE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, it has now been 2 weeks since a 7.0 
earthquake struck Haiti on the afternoon of January 12. Over these past 
14 days, we have seen pictures of the devastation of Port-au-Prince and 
the surrounding communities. Estimates of the number of dead continue 
to rise. And the injured in the capital alone is already in the tens of 
thousands, many needing sophisticated medical care. People live in the 
streets and open spaces, fearful of the daily aftershocks. The very 
basics of life, water, food, and shelter are absent or in short supply.
  We watch in anguish as we learn about the potential number of newly 
orphaned children in a country that already had around 400,000 orphans. 
The Washington Post ran a story on Saturday about how 75 percent of the 
schools have been destroyed and the deaths of so many teachers and 
students. Nearly every Haitian family in the affected areas suffered 
the loss of at least one loved one, and nearly every UN, international 
agency, and NGO operating in the area suffered devastating losses among 
their Haitian and international staff.
  And while our own U.S. Embassy staff and aid agencies worked around 
the clock to respond to the crisis, each and every one of them are also 
dealing with their own shock and grief over lost family members and 
Haitian and U.S. colleagues.
  In my congressional district, Mr. Speaker, Britney Gengel, the 
daughter of Len and Cherylann Gengel from Rutland, Massachusetts, 
remains missing. She is among the approximately 200 Haitian and foreign 
nationals who were in the Hotel Montana when the earthquake struck. She 
was part of a student team from Florida's Lynn University in Haiti 
working with Food for the Poor. In the few days that she was in Haiti, 
she had already emailed her parents to tell them that she felt that she 
had found her life's calling.
  Hundreds of search and rescue workers have been active day and night 
at the Hotel Montana, including U.S. teams from Fairfax, Virginia; 
Miami-Dade; and Los Angeles counties. One rescue worker, talking with 
Britney's father, spoke movingly about how this was one of the worst 
sites he had ever worked on, and if his daughter were trapped here, he 
wouldn't give up on finding her either. The compassion and empathy of 
the rescue workers and every member of our U.S. Embassy team are 
palpable, and their commitment to all victims' families is total.
  We see on our television and read in the papers and online of the 
generosity and resilience of the human spirit: people helping people, 
comforting one another, sacrificing for the well-being of one another. 
We often forget how much the Haitian people are helping one another as 
we struggle to provide and get aid to them.
  Governments, international agencies, NGOs, corporations, and 
individuals have responded and mobilized as never before. On Friday 
evening, I was in my hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, at an event 
entitled Worcester Cares for Haiti, to mobilize donations from our 
local community. And I am sure that many Members of this House have 
been at similar events in their own districts.
  Aid is pouring into Haiti to reach the more than 3 million people 
directly affected by the earthquake. It is flying in to Santo Domingo 
and Barahona airports in the Dominican Republic and being trucked 
overland in vast convoys. It is landing at the Port-au-Prince airport, 
which now receives over 100 flights day and night. And thanks to our 
Navy and Coast Guard, the destroyed Port-au-Prince docks are now 30 
percent operational.
  I want to thank all the nations of the world that have responded so 
generously. I especially want to thank our hemispheric neighbors, many 
of whom annually suffer from natural disasters and still struggle to 
overcome centuries of poverty. They have been particularly generous, 
from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and so 
many others. And a very special thank you to the Government and people 
of the Dominican Republic.
  To my own government, Secretary Clinton, Secretary Gates, 
Administrator Raj Shah, Secretary Napolitano,

[[Page H334]]

and all of the agencies, officers, and staff here in Washington and on 
the ground in Haiti, who, when faced with a Herculean task, have more 
than risen to the occasion. And I want to say how grateful I am for all 
that you have done, are doing, and will be doing in the days, weeks, 
and months to come. I have seen firsthand your commitment, compassion, 
expertise, and professionalism. I am sure that mistakes have been made, 
but no one wants the aid to arrive more quickly and get to those who 
need it more than the U.S. personnel on the ground in Haiti.
  For myself, I have never been more proud of my government or more 
grateful for the people who serve in it.
  Mr. Speaker, I will insert into the Record a story that appeared in 
The Washington Post entitled, ``Death toll growing at Port-au-Prince's 
Hotel Montana, once a symbol of stability.''

               [From the Washington Post, Jan. 24, 2010]

Death Toll Growing at Port-au-Prince's Hotel Montana, Once a Symbol of 
                               Stability

                           (By William Booth)

       Before the earthquake, the Hotel Montana was the place to 
     be in Haiti. During coups and crises, it provided air-
     conditioned shelter from the political storms for the 
     diplomats, spies and aid workers--and a few heavy-duty 
     criminals--who gathered nightly at the News Bar under a 
     towering mahogany tree to sip rum sours concocted by Monsieur 
     Lauren, known as the best barman in the country.
       To many foreigners, as well as the Haitian elite, the 
     Montana stood for security and stability in a country that 
     often lacked both. Now the Port-au-Prince landmark lies in 
     ruins, as families of missing American, Canadian and French 
     citizens press their embassies for any news of life at the 
     scene of the most concentrated international search-and-
     rescue effort mounted since the Jan. 12 quake.
       It does not look good. As body identification teams proceed 
     with their grim assignment, the list of the dead is growing--
     posted on a tree in the hotel's circular drive because the 
     reception desk is buried under rubble. Most reporters are 
     being kept away as workers in white biohazard suits pull 
     bodies out and then stumble off to vomit in the bushes.
       ``Except for miracles, hope is unfortunately fading,'' 
     Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the United Nations' Office 
     for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said Saturday.
       Some rescue workers have said privately that too many 
     resources have been deployed at the Montana, at the expense 
     of searches elsewhere, and that the U.S. and other 
     governments have focused more attention on those missing at 
     the hotel than on Haitian survivors.
       A Facebook page, Haiti Earthquake Hotel Montana, had more 
     than 13,000 members as of Saturday evening and is filled with 
     news, prayers, frustration--and photos of those probably lost 
     in the quake. The posts are poignant: ``Diane Cave, Room 220, 
     may have been on way to gym'' or ``David Apperson last seen 
     in lobby.''
       Some people post messages of support not only for the 
     families but also for the missing. It is not as strange as it 
     might seem. Cellphone service, disrupted at first, has 
     improved. Someone in the rubble could have received e-mail.
       The affiliations of the missing tell part of the story. 
     Many guests at the Montana were working for organizations 
     such as Food for the Poor, Compassion International and the 
     United Methodist Committee on Relief.
       A dozen students from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., 
     were here volunteering with Food for the Poor. Four of them, 
     all women, are missing, along with two faculty members who 
     accompanied them.
       Angel Aloma, executive director of Food for the Poor, stood 
     in the driveway in the gathering darkness, hugging Gerthe 
     Cardoso, one of the hotel's owners. The two were going 
     through names of staff members, with Aloma asking whether 
     they were alive and Cardoso answering--yes, no, yes.
       ``These were not employees, they were family,'' Cardoso 
     said. ``Our accountant. Our waiters. Some had been with us 
     for 15 or 20 years. They came to weddings, birthdays, 
     funerals.''
       Aloma asked after the famous bartender. ``He is gone,'' 
     Cardoso said, her eyes filling with tears. ``Oh, Lauren!''
       ``Our staff member LeAnn Chong, they saved her after 17 
     hours of digging,'' Aloma said. ``They had to cut off her 
     hair to get her out.''
       Many survivors lost far more. Rescue teams describe the 
     work at the Montana as ``highly technical'' and ``medically 
     extreme.'' Some rescues took 24 hours. Buried survivors 
     subsisted on a trickle of their own urine until rescuers 
     could get an intravenous needle into dehydrated veins. One 
     survivor spent four days in a painful crouch. Some heard 
     other people's last words, their last breaths.
       The Rev. Clinton Rabb, in Haiti for a meeting with 
     Methodist aid workers, was freed Jan. 15 after a French 
     surgeon sawed through one leg at the knee and the other at 
     the ankle. Still conscious, Rabb emerged from a tunnel dug 
     into the rubble, like a miner being pulled from a collapsed 
     shaft, and was whisked away in a Navy helicopter. He died 
     last Sunday in a Florida hospital.


                        Help from an iPhone app

       For nine days, an intense rescue effort took place at the 
     Montana, with teams from Fairfax County, France, Chile, 
     Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere working sections. Throughout 
     Haiti, more than 50 teams had rescued 132 people by Saturday. 
     U.S. teams took part in 47 rescues. Some of the most dramatic 
     were at the Montana.
       Dan Woolley was in Haiti with Compassion International 
     making a video about poor children. He had just returned to 
     the hotel that Tuesday afternoon when the 7.0-magnitude quake 
     brought the 145-room hotel crashing down. Woolley was trapped 
     in a space by an elevator shaft. It was pitch black, but he 
     used his iPhone first-aid app to treat his leg fracture. He 
     lost his glasses but used his digital single-lens reflex 
     camera to focus and both devices to create a weak glow.
       ``He used the little light he had to write letters to his 
     wife and his kids,'' said Raul Perla of the Fairfax team that 
     helped French rescuers pull him out 60 hours later. ``Can you 
     imagine?''
       Other people, just a few feet away, have not been rescued. 
     A colleague of Woolley's, David Hames, was last seen 20 feet 
     from the elevator shaft where Woolley was found. ``David is 
     an amazing family man, the host and creator of the kids' show 
     `Cranium's Ark,' much loved by hundreds, maybe thousands,'' a 
     friend, Melanie Dobson, said by e-mail.
       The family-owned Montana, built in 1946 in the hills of 
     Port-au-Prince with just 12 rooms, had grown into a sprawling 
     compound with shops, a swimming pool and conference 
     facilities.
       Now rescue workers store oxygen tanks in the half-empty 
     pool. On the lawn is a makeshift shower. Piles of rotting 
     meal rations sit by the fabled News Bar. Beside the 
     conference room stairs, a man in a light-blue shirt, pressed 
     flat by the roof, lies like a flower between the pages of a 
     book.
       The place reeks.


                        `It's a little miracle'

       The president of Lynn University, Kevin M. Ross, pressed 
     this week for the return of remains, including those of the 
     four Lynn students missing in the Montana. ``This is needed 
     for every grieving father, son, mother, daughter, friend and 
     neighbor who is aching at this very moment for a phone 
     call,'' Ross said. ``A missing family member, whether alive 
     or dead, must be returned to his or her loved ones.''
       Last week, rumors spread in Port-au-Prince that a popular 
     Montana co-owner, Nadine Cardoso-Riedl, had been killed in 
     her office. Then, just as suddenly, word spread that she was 
     alive.
       ``We had a little dog, a beagle, that was up on the roof by 
     the terrace, and he alerted, he picked up a scent, but when 
     we brought other dogs to confirm, they couldn't smell her,'' 
     said Camilo Monroy of the Colombian Civil Defense rescue 
     squad. ``We went back the next day, and the same beagle 
     smelled her, and we called, and someone answered. We brought 
     over her son, and he said, 'I think that is my mother down 
     there.' ``
       The Colombians and other teams dug one tunnel, then a 
     second. Cardoso-Riedl responded, saying two other people were 
     near her. One was perhaps a boy. Sometimes she was lucid, 
     sometimes she appeared to lose consciousness and could not 
     assist the rescuers when they asked: ``Are we close? Can you 
     hear us?''
       More than 100 hours after her hotel fell down on her, she 
     was pulled out. ``It's a little miracle,'' her husband, 
     Reinhard Riedl, told reporters. ``She's one tough cookie. She 
     is indestructible.''
       Her sister, Gerthe, said Nadine had been kidnapped in Haiti 
     a few years ago and held captive for 15 days. ``You have no 
     idea what it takes to survive here,'' she said.

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