Ledger

Issue date: 3/9/10 Section: News

Benj Haisch sat for nine uncomfortable hours on 500 tents and 1,000 pounds of medicine in the back of a Delta Daihatsu until he reached Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As the half pick-up, half dump truck crawled into town, Haisch was overwhelmed by the devastating destruction of the 7.0 life-shattering earthquake. He could not escape the sight of rubble. Buildings upon buildings covered the street sides. Everywhere he turned, once massive buildings now laid flat on the ground or were about to crumble. Homes were non-existent. Shelter consisted of thin pieces of wood substituting as walls with a roof made from one or two transparent bed sheets. This is why Haisch was in Haiti. To donate his time. To provide families with adequate shelter.
"I felt like I wanted to do whatever I could," Haisch, 24, a senior majoring in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences with a concentration in Arts, Media and Culture, said. "I didn't know what to expect. When we first drove into Port-au-Prince I kept saying 'unreal.' Everything looked like it was a war movie. It looked like absolute chaos."
On Feb. 5, Haisch and 15 other members of Calvary Community Church arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport with 500 tents. Each person had a personal bag and two, 2x2 boxes full of tents that were overweight by 15 pounds each. Delta Airlines waved all the baggage fees.
"King 5 News and Komo News 4 showed up at the airport to cover us leaving," Haisch said. "I think that since they were there we got a little more leverage to get all the baggage fees waved. If they hadn't waved all of the fees we would have had to of paid hundreds of dollars."
Haisch landed at Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic on Feb. 6. Haisch, his brother Alex Haisch, 19, and Drew Konzelman continued the journey to Haiti with the tents. Konzelman had contacts in the Dominican Republic Medical Mission.
The other 12 church members boarded another flight and headed back to the US.
"Me and my brother didn't even know that we were going to Haiti until we got to the Dominican," Haisch said. "I was just focused on making sure that all the tents got through."
Haisch is no stranger to catastrophes. He went to India after the tsunami hit. So, he had a sense of what massive disasters could do to a community, but this place was different.
"You see all these terrible images on the television, on the internet, and in the newspapers, but you can't grasp it until you are here," Haisch said. "It was so widespread. It was crazy. It was sad. It was rough."

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