OTTAWA — Danielle Trepanier, a 35-year-old Windsor native working for Doctors without Borders, was trapped under the rubble of a house in Port-au-Prince for almost 24 hours before being safely rescued.
But her harrowing experience hasn’t stopped other members of her medical organization from swiftly signing up for emergency duty in the collapsed Haitian capital.
Nor has the prospect of treating millions of wounded, homeless, traumatized people dissuaded other Canadian medical professionals from travelling to Haiti — some at their own expense.
“It’s a passion,” said 33-year-old Valerie Rzepka, a registered nurse who chairs the Canadian Medical Assistance Team. The Grimsby, Ont. native was to leave for Haiti Friday with a CMAT team, including a nurse and three paramedics.
Rzepka is the kind of practitioner you turn to in a crisis. Her credentials include the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, 2007 floods in Bangladesh and the 2008 China ’quake.
The work “really called to me,” she said Thursday. “I found that my skills were put to good use.”
Rzepka works for a small organization. But Canadians also figure prominently in one of the biggest, as a Canadian-led team from the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement team arrived in Port-au-Prince.
It’s headed by Gatineau, Que. resident Jean-Pierre Taschereau, senior manager of emergency response at the Canadian Red Cross. “You work on adrenalin,” said Taschereau. In Haiti, he’ll co-ordinate nine emergency response units involving 11 countries.
Chiran Livera, with the Canadian Red Cross in Ottawa, said two other Canadians are already in Haiti with the Red Cross, and 10 more will fly down soon.
Their daunting task? “Planning out what’s going to happen for the next week, next months, and it looks like for the next few years,” he said.
christina.spencer@sunmedia.ca
