Fox News’ Bill Hemmer in Haiti: ‘The misery never ends’
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Putting in perspective the dire need facing Haitians hurt by this week’s earthquake has been a challenge for the reporters on the ground. Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer happened upon one scene in Port-au-Prince that encapsulated the urgency: a tent city of 1,000 people erected on a soccer field, with only one doctor frantically trying to treat the wounded. Working without gauze or even water, Dr. Wilkens Gilbert was stitching up cuts, amputating limbs and assisting a pregnant woman who was in labor. [An earlier version of this post said no anesthetic; limbs were being amputated using local anesthetic.]
“We are waiting for help,” Gilbert told Hemmer. “It’s very bad conditions, but we have no choice.”
“You can drive for eight hours, and the misery never ends,” Hemmer told viewers. “And neither does the destruction. Block after block, street after street, it takes your breath away.”
In an e-mail, Hemmer described the soccer field as a sea of “bedsheets, blue and white tarps, plastic sheets used for cover from the daytime heat.’
“The trail of desperation and need,” he said. “It doesn’t end.”
-- Matea Gold