At the other end, one suspects, Chief Warrant Officer Eric Dubois just swallow a sob. “I think the hardest part, now are the memories of the orphanage …” Failing to know it, we imagine this sergeant of the squadron of gendarmerie mobile Antibes strapping broke the rigors of maintaining order. However: the military has not forgotten the ordeal last January 18 in the rubble of a nursery in Port-au-Prince. That day, he had been ordered to secure the intervention of French rescuers. Under his eye, sixty-eight small bodies were extracted from the rubble. “Since I try to move on, says he, modestly. After all, what kind of scene is part of the job. ”
After two weeks in Haiti, many of the 550 rescuers from the Civil Security and the 108 policemen dispatched immediately after the earthquake have returned to France. They will be received Monday by the Prime Minister. Many, like the sergeant-Dubois, confessed having been confronted with scenes and emotions of uncommon violence. “It was like a war film,” recounts Colonel Franck Louvier which has issued from county firefighters Val-d’Oise, coordinated two weeks during the intervention of French physicians in four hospitals Port-au-Prince. Equally shocked, a policeman evokes “a performance comparable to that of cities destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.” Still others describe “a gigantic project in its area”, “terrible injuries”, a “nightmare” …
Committed to 7 am to 20 hours or more each day since their arrival, often inexperienced, some soldiers have sometimes struggled to hide their fatigue. Met January 15 at the foot of the ruins of the Hotel Montana, a master physician had waived such restrain her tears. There was fatigue, frustration and genuine sadness. In the morning, the officer had to admit his impotence. The young woman he had tried for eight hours to save the rubble had died. Yet he had tried everything, still kneeling under tons of concrete to general anesthesia. “Part of his body was crushed by debris,” he explained. She did not survive the extraction. ”
Expert-rescue excavation, Lieutenant Christopher Carrier, assigned to the intervention unit of Nogent-le-Rotrou tempers: “Sure, it’s difficult to spend several days to explore the ruins but could find survivors. Sometimes we even come to say we did not do the job … And then, fortunately, we found the energy to leave each morning and it finally paid off. “In total, the men of the French Civil Security extracted from the rubble 15 of the 134 survivors recovered from the earthquake. On January 28, fifteen days after the earthquake, they have saved such a young girl of 16 who was in a state of extreme dehydration. “At the moment, we were so focused on the need to go fast you did not quite woken up to this miracle,” says Lt. Carrier. Only after quarter of an hour I suddenly was gone chills … ”
A “huge cohesion
Responsible for the field hospital located in the gardens of the Embassy of France, where nearly 140 surgical procedures have been performed since January 17, the physician-Colonel Michel Orcel believes that the “enormous cohesion of his unit is its main asset. “Of course, we all suddenly slack when we lose a patient of 20 years for which we fought for hours using all our means of resuscitation, says he. But whenever one of us falters really, it was immediately supported by the other. “Less categorical, a young lifeguard says that despite years of training, he did not expect to fully “it” – that is to say to the thousands of corpses encountered on his way since his arrival in town. “Whenever we enter the ruins we crossed one or two. In the end it becomes hard. “The awareness of his own limitations has also been a test. “We should take time to rest, it is human. But we also knew that there were dozens of Haitians, perhaps children who were trapped under the ruins, waiting for us and had little time … ”
Faced with an unprecedented wave of open fractures, deep wounds and other ground, the French doctors were often hung up with “beautiful moments of life” occurring here and there. “We have made several deliveries that every time we restore some strength,” smiled the Colonel Louvier. Christophe Carrier testified that he was “stunned” by the ability of people to bounce the reopening of small markets everywhere – while on the roadside, there were still dogs and pigs eating human remains. A military finally welcomed the “great dignity of the Haitians meet their physical pain.”
“Through their training, we at present feel that our staff are pretty well cashed the coup,” says Damien Deluz, the psychologist firefighters Val-de-Marne. For all practical purposes, all the soldiers involved have been imposing a “debrief” of 24 hours in Fort-de-France. An individualized psychological They were also proposed. “For us, the military, it is not obvious to use such support, however, said Chief Warrant Officer Eric Dubois.
thank you for your report