Local Firefighter Headed Back to Haiti

Eric Adman of Kenmore will teach an EMT class to Haitians to help them set up a emergency transportation system in Port-Au-Prince

Local paramedic and firefighter Eric Adman will leave for Haiti for the second time this year today, Tuesday, Aug. 9, as part of team that is helping Haitians establish an emergency transportation system in Port-Au-Prince.

EMPACT Northwest, an organization of firefighter/paramedics and other medical personnel, sponsors adman’s trip and other medical personnel formed in response to the Haitian earthquake in January 2011.

Adman, who lives in Kenmore, went to Haiti in January 2011 with an EMPACT group firefighter/paramedics, doctors and nurses from the Puget Sound area to work in a medical clinic in Bojeux Parc, a converted amusement park.

He treated non-emergency patients there for malaria, rashes and other ailments and worked with a team of Haitian medical translators.

“The most common things were respiratory problems associated with pollution, anxiety and stress because of life and the aftermath of earthquake,” he said. “Skin rashes, run of the mill same stuff we have here, high blood pressure.”

The damage left by the earthquake was devastating as well as the air and water pollution, Adman said.

“A lot of sense of devastation but at the same time you saw people cleanly washed and nicely dressed, kids in school uniforms on their way school,” he said. “People have a hopeful attitude despite the circumstances. The people we were dealing with were educated and optimistic.”

Adman said a sub-class of rich Haitians has access to medical care and lives like Americans or even better, but the vast majority are dirt poor and don’t have access to medical care. Most of the people that would be considered middle class work for non-governmental organizations doing work in Haiti, he added.

Adman will teach a one-week emergency medical technician course while he’s in Haiti for 10 days.

It’s part of a training that runs from July 10 to Sept. 20 for about 20 Haitians so they can set up an emergency medical transport system, which is essentially non-existent, right now.

The Miami, Fla. Fire Department donated ambulances and the group is working with the University of Miami, which has a hospital in Port-Au-Prince.

Adman will be going to Port-Au-Prince with Mike Loutsis, a Northshore Fire Department lieutenant, to teach the curriculum to the Haitians in a format similar to a fire department recruiting academy.

Every day there’s a routine of physical training; checking on emergency vehicles; a morning of classroom sessions; and then clinical field rotations in the afternoon where the students volunteer in medical clinic, hospital or ambulances.

“If we can get a little small thing running, a model, we can expand it,” he said.

Armadeus Davidson, a Gig Harbor firefighter/paramedic, started EMPACT Northwest right after the Haitian earthquake. He started doing volunteer medical and started bringing more down fire and medical personnel with him from primarily the Puget Sound area but also other parts of the country.

Adman said Haitians are still recovering from the quake but they have a long way to go. Some rebuilding has slowly happened but “tons and tons of people are living in tent cities,” he said, and dealing with the onset of tropical storms.

“Traveling to a place like and seeing what they don’t have and what we have, for all the issues we’re dealing with in our county we’re rearranging the frosting on our cake,” he said. “We’ve got everything we need, when most of the people down there really don’t. It’s made me appreciate how much we have here and how people can get by with so much less.”

Adman is also running for King County Fire Protection District Commission Position 1 in the Aug. 16 primary and will be in Haiti when the election results come in. His said his wife will probably call him and let him know how he did.