To follow her story as it’s told in her own words, you can read her blog, here on our Webchannel:

https://panhandleparade.com/index.php/blogs/blog_lbutz/

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Local Nurse Hard at Work in Haiti
01/20/10 - 08:52 PM
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In less than a week, Linda Butz went from treating panhandle patients to earthquake victims.  And in that same amount of time, a conference room in Haiti’s American Embassy became her emergency room.

Butz is a member of the Florida One Disaster Medical Assistance Team.  Her team got the call to deploy to Haiti from Washington DC last week, and has been treating patients around the clock ever since.  Needless to say, she’s seen a lot.

“I took care of a five day old baby, she was born the day after the earthquake,” Butz said in a phone interview from Haiti.  “The mother delivered her on the street, and had an infection.  We went to take her sutures out and she was actually sewn up with a needle and thread—a household needle and thread.”

The mother’s baby was mal-nourished, and so small it had to be fed with a syringe.  Butz said the mother and child were airlifted to safety, and are now in stable condition. 

Butz works the night shift, from 7pm to 7am.  And when she does get to sleep during the day, it’s in a tent pitched in the Embassy’s courtyard.
No matter where she is, she said she feels very safe.  Butz said she and other workers are under the full-time protection of the US Army and Air Force.

“Oh, absolutely—we never go anywhere without security,” Butz said.  “As long as we’re in by dark, we’re okay.”

She’s also been at the airport helping hundreds of patient people board planes to the US.  She says the lines, which start at the Embassy, never end.

“The Haitians are lined up outside [the Embassy] two and three hundred every day, trying to get passports and visas to the states,” Butz said.  “They wait outside in the hot sun all day, and then they finally get inside, and they wait a day or two to finally get an airplane out.”

But there are limits on what her team can do, and who they can treat.  She says most workers cannot leave the makeshift camps, some of which are set up at gold courses and soccer fields.

“We can’t go out into the street and treat people, they just storm you,” Butz said.  “Because they are so needy.”

Butz said the toughest thing isn’t just seeing the destruction or the wounds.  It’s the loss. 

“I see a lot of people coming in, like 16 year olds with their baby brother or sister, who haven’t seen their parents since the earthquake,” Butz said.

“We’re shipping them to Florida, and we don’t know what’s going to happen to them.  So I think the toughest thing [to witness] is the loss, and how it affects the little ones.”