Home from Haiti

He had been training for the moment, taking classes and maintaining his certification, but the Friday the call came, Los Angeles County Firefighter Paramedic Rob Artle wasn’t sure he could go.

The Huntington Beach resident is an urban search-and-rescue volunteer with California Task Force II, one of only two rapid-response teams in the country that can be deployed during international emergencies, and was called to Haiti. With only six hours to cancel appointments, rearrange plans and make sure his wife could get off work to care for their sons, Artle said, there was a moment’s hesitation.

“They called, and you have no notice of it,” Rob Artle said. “You have appointments and plans. . . . You have that momentary thought, ‘Well, can I do it?’”

The decision to leave his family — wife Melissa, sons Gage, 11 months, and Jax, 2, and stepson Casey, 11 — was hard, but Rob Artle knew the Haitian people needed help now.

A new definition of poverty

Artle left Jan. 29 and returned Sunday evening. Still exhausted from the trip and the time difference, Rob Artle sat on the floor of his living room with his wife, sons and dog and talked about his experiences. The trip will be something he will always carry with him and put into perspective how fortunate he is, he said.

“If you think you had a bad Monday, you didn’t have a bad Monday,” Rob Artle said.

Melissa Artle was apprehensive for her husband’s safety while abroad, but is proud of what he accomplished.

“I’m so proud of what he did ... knowing how he helped so many people and did so much good,” she said.

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12, killing an estimated 100,000 people, CNN reported.

The wreckage in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is “unbelievable,” with whole blocks of buildings in rubble, and it wasn’t just the destruction that was shocking.

“You think you know poverty working in an East L.A. barrio, but then you go to Haiti,” Artle said.

What started as a search-and-rescue trip to deal with aftershocks and secondary collapses became a humanitarian one with the team’s focus on hospitals and orphanages, said Capt. Dave Norman.

The team of 10 spent its days setting up hospitals and orphanages — where all the kids were sleeping on the ground — with clean water, shelter and power.

“There is a lot of despair in the country ... It was very challenging for all of us to see the pain and suffering these people are going through,” Norman said.

Teaching self-sufficiency

The mission wasn’t just to give Haitians supplies and leave, but to teach them how to use and maintain the generators and assemble and move shelters. After being so vulnerable and desperate, Rob Artle said, they showed a desire to learn.

“They are resilient people, so they want to learn and be independent,” he said.

The capital was filled with U.S. military, international relief personnel and United Nations workers mixed in with Haitians trying to survive, Rob Artle said.

Despite all the people who had flooded into the small country and “even though it seems like a lot of aid, it’s hard to make a dent,” he said.

Seeing the people and the situation, Rob Artle wanted to offer them long-term help, but the Haitian people can’t even think beyond the next week, day or hour, he said.

Basic life needs are all they are looking for at this point, he said.

“It’s a slow process, and it’s going to take years to get them back to some sort of normalcy,” said Huntington Beach resident Chris Valenzuela, part of the rescue crew. “Hopefully, in the end, they will be better off, but it’s going to be years before that happens.”

The best way for people to help is to give money, Rob Artle said.

Make sure to give to organizations that are legitimate and the money will go directly to the Haitian people, Norman said.

Valenzuela said one of the ways people can help is to be proactive, instead of reactive, by getting involved with organizations and donating before a disaster.

“I encourage people to get involved before an earthquake hits, or a hurricane hits, or a natural disaster,” Valenzuela said. “There are people in need throughout the world.