A year after Haiti quake, Utah doctors remember the heartache, continue to help

SALT LAKE CITY — Jeff Randle is flying from Utah to Haiti Wednesday, the latest of his many returns to the Caribbean island nation he loves.

Arriving first as a young Mormon missionary, his experiences led to a career in physical medicine and rehabilitation. The Salt Lake City doctor founded Healing Hands for Haiti International a dozen years ago, and the Port-au-Prince clinical campus provided treatment, training and prosthetic equipment.

His flight comes on the one-year anniversary of Haiti's devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake, which rocked the already reeling Third World country by killing an estimated 230,000 Haitians, injuring some 300,000 and leaving another 1.5 million homeless.

The Healing Hands compound sustained extensive damage, and Randle arrived in Haiti soon after the quake a year ago to survey the magnitude of the problems at the compound and in the nation he loves.

The pledges of billions of dollars in international aid, relief and reconstruction in Haiti have resulted in a mixed bag of successes and unfulfilled promises, as the country still sits among mountains of concrete rubble and saddled with a government that even before the quake was challenged but has since worsen because of loss of workforce, facilities, records and function.

Healing Hands for Haiti, however, has benefited from what Randle says is its best year in donations and support. Damaged buildings on compound property have been cleared, and Healing Hands will soon break ground on a new $3 million rehab complex.

"It was only a dream in the past," he said, adding that the earthquake's aftermath "got Haiti in the eye of the world community."

Still, Randle realizes that his organization's successes in 2010 are among the exceptions, rather than the rule.

"My heart is still heavy for Haiti because I don't think it has changed much since."

Doctors' hands

Many Utahns rushed to Haiti post-quake and post-haste to help. Some were expatriate Haitians anxious to aid family and loved ones. Others arrived as specialists in recovery, security, demolition and reconstruction. Still more coupled other resources with a resolve to wade into Haiti's chaotic mess of death, destruction and disorder.