Quake

Donations for Haiti have poured in to the American Red Cross of Central Maryland from a range of sources. Nothing, though, has stood out like the coins and crumpled dollar bills that spilled from one envelope. That gift - $14.64 - came from the pockets of homeless people at a downtown Baltimore shelter. "We were all weepy-eyed," recalled Red Cross volunteer coordinator Bobbie Jones, who was at the front desk when the donation arrived. Public relations director Linnea Anderson got teary, too. "Just the thought of those people huddled together in a shelter and seeing a need beyond themselves is enough to give anybody chills," she said.

Monday dawned wet, gray and windy, but Ann Varghese wanted to get back to work. Needed to, she felt, after all that had happened. At 7:15, she pulled onto Charles Street and drove out to Carroll County for the first time since enduring 55 hours in a collapsed hotel in Haiti. "Hi, everybody," Varghese, 31, said cheerfully as she walked into the New Windsor offices of IMA World Health. One by one, she hugged several co-workers amid smiles and bits of laughter. Someone clapped. Hovering over the happy reunion was a yellow balloon with a big smiley face.

The order to close a helicopter landing zone that relief workers and crew members of the USNS Comfort planned to use Friday to fly earthquake victims to the floating hospital came from the top general in charge of American relief operations in Haiti, a spokesman for the general said. But Lt. Gen. Ken Keen gave the order at the request of United Nations officials who wanted to use the site - on the presidential palace grounds - to hand out relief supplies, the spokesman said. And the order specifically excluded "life and limb flights," he said.

On her first day in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, Dr. Rana Hamdy discovered that a patient she had seen upon arrival had died - a teenage boy in need of dialysis whose life she knew was in jeopardy after noticing blood in his urine. Shortly before Hamdy departed, an expectant mother had gone into labor. During that pendulum swing from death to life, the Johns Hopkins third-year pediatrics resident sometimes spent more than 20 hours each day aiding victims of the tragedy that has killed an estimated 200,000 Haitians while leaving many thousands injured.

The goal Friday was to move 120 earthquake victims to the Navy's modern, sterile medical facility floating off the coast. To coordinate the mission, the USNS Comfort sent a trauma surgeon who has served four combat tours and a security team to establish a landing zone outside Haiti's ruined National Palace and begin ferrying patients by helicopter. But Friday did not turn out to be a day of humanitarian medicine for the Comfort's Rapid Assessment Team; it brought only frustration and wasted time.

On her first day in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, Dr. Rana Hamdy discovered that a patient she had seen upon arrival had died - a teenage boy in need of dialysis whose life she knew was in jeopardy after noticing blood in his urine. Shortly before Hamdy departed, an expectant mother had gone into labor. During that pendulum swing from death to life, the Johns Hopkins third-year pediatrics resident sometimes spent more than 20 hours each day aiding victims of the tragedy that has killed an estimated 200,000 Haitians while leaving many thousands injured.

In a matter of days, Stanley Hermane will likely go from a crowded orphanage in earthquake-ravaged Haiti to a warm and cozy bedroom in Baltimore. Michael and Monica Simonsen, a Riverside Park couple who have been trying to adopt the 21-month-old boy for most of his life, are eagerly awaiting his arrival. Now it appears that last week's earthquake had a small silver lining for families in the adoption process: Much of the red tape has been removed. The Simonsens are among scores of families looking to benefit from a recent Department of Homeland Security measure that will allow many Haitian children already in the adoption process to come to the U.S. right away.

Moise Larose, a Maryland father of seven children, had just left the grocery store and was driving down a dusty road in his native country of Haiti when the earthquake hit. His car began shifting uncontrollably. He watched prominent buildings crumble to the ground. Larose, a sergeant in the U.S. Army Reserves based at Fort Meade, dialed his cell phone, trying in vain to reach his wife and his children on Jan. 12 when a catastrophic earthquake destroyed the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, killing tens of thousands.