SILVERTHORNE — A bus driver from Silverthorne who wanted to help Haitian earthquake victims soon found himself in a tent community set up at an amusement park, surrounded by people needing urgent medical attention.

“I did everything from help deliver a baby to hold down patients to you name it — everything,” said Michael Green, 37.

Green traveled to Port-au-Prince with a group of physicians from across the world. He handled logistics through such tasks as finding supplies, changing intravenous drip bags, picking up patients and helping out where needed.

He said the work also included “taking time to make a child smile” by blowing up a rubber glove like a balloon.

Green found through a friend the opportunity to travel to Haiti with Islamic Medical Association of North America, which had physicians who came from as far as Pakistan. The group of mostly medical professionals — orthopedic surgeons, plastic surgeons, anesthesiologists and more — took care of people who had waited 18 days or more for care.

Green returned Feb. 6 from the week-long trip to a country devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Jan. 12.

Driving to devastated Port-au-Prince

Because of the back-ups and extra expenses at the Port-au-Prince airport, Green said his group flew into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and hired rides to Haiti's capital city.

He said the damage to Haiti's capitol city was horrendous, with the majority of the buildings crushed.

Nearly all the patients had the same story about injuries sustained from buildings that fell on them during the quake.

With the hospitals overwhelmed, the clinic helped to provide further relief. It treated about 350 patients per day, he said.

Tents set up at a children's amusement park included operating rooms and emergency rooms as well as sleeping arrangements for the volunteers. The volunteers only received one meal per day — usually consisting of beans and rice — and water was rationed, he said.

There were patients with “just gouges of flesh taken” off their bodies, often from walls collapsing, Green said.

He said the patients coming for care would line up “nice and orderly,” and they were “very polite.”

Many of the people would return from medical care to sleep under sheets, while the lucky ones had tents.

Green said he also spent time handing out condoms, for nearly everybody treated had some form of sexually transmitted disease.

“It brought a social issue to light,” he said.

He said he was happy to have traveled with a smaller organization than the American Red Cross or the United Nations Children's Fund, because in Haiti he witnessed apparent inefficiencies with large non-governmental organizations.

A ‘kaleidoscope of emotions'

Green, who drives shuttle buses for Copper Mountain Resort, said he's traveled to 47 countries including Iraq and the Republic of Congo.

While the adventures have been for charity, work or just to explore, Green said the volunteer experience of the Haiti trip put him through a “kaleidoscope of emotions.”

“You don't know how much you can really give until you go to a place like that,” he said. “They'll be hurting for years.”

He said the trip included visits to tent cities full of people who had not yet received medical help.

Green recalls “smelling rot of bodies of students that were trapped in a university.”

Seven days was “all you can really take,” he said of the trip.

Green continues to dream of “lines and lines of people asking for help,” but he would “definitely go back,” he said.

Robert Allen can be contacted at (970) 668-4628 or rallen@summitdaily.com.