Haiti: Nurse Offers Care in Disaster; Airport Rum for Antiseptic

Jan. 19, 2010— -- Florence Germain travelled to Haiti to bury her father, who passed away on Christmas Day. But in a twist of fate, her journey to Haiti turned into a scramble to save lives.

"It's like a movie, running in my head slowly," she said. "Reliving everything, it's like, 'Did this really happen, did this really happen to me?'"

On Jan. 12, Germain, a 34-year-old registered nurse from Eatontown, N.J., was at the Port-au-Prince airport. She had just handed over the boarding pass for her flight from Haiti back to the United States when she felt the ground beneath her begin to shake.

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Her first instinct was to protect her 3-year-old son from the collapsing ceiling, she said.

"I grabbed my son and just covered him under me and ran with him," she said.

Germain said that after what seemed like nearly half a minute of shaking, the quake finally stopped. Immediately, she and her family began looking for a way out of the collapsing airport. Then, they felt the first aftershock.

"Everything was locked down; we started panicking," she said.

Germain and her family eventually found their way to the airport parking lot, where waves of Haitian locals began bringing their wounded in search of medical care.

"They were looking for help, but there was no one to help them there," she said. "Some U.N. trucks were coming. What they could pick up, they picked up. What they could not, they left."

One man arrived in a cab. His leg had been nearly severed from his body. He was in agony; he did not want to be touched, even by those trying to help.

Germain was the one medical professional there. There were no first aid supplies available. She used what she could to fight for the man's life. She doused the wound with airport rum to discourage infection. She used clothing to improvise a bandage. She treated his pain with a bystander's Vicodin.

She offered what little care she could. Then she went back into the city, to the U.S. embassy -- where there were more of the injured.

"Nobody asked me to do anything; I was just assessing the gravity of the situation," she said.