Disaster specialist Teahen back from Haiti; worries what happens when the initial wave of relief leaves

Disaster specialist Peter Teahen is back home in Cedar Rapids after nine days in earthquake-hit Haiti.

The disaster, he reports, is grimmer and sadder than you can imagine.

Teahen, a funeral director and president of Teahen Funeral Home in Cedar Rapids, spent his time in Haiti helping reestablish orphanages and working at a hospital. He described the hospital morgue as stacked full of dead bodies.

“It was like a scene out of a horror movie,” he says.

Teahen says medical teams now have provided initial care to the survivors of the quake, but he says that many of the injured, including many children who have lost limbs, will have long-term recovery needs.

Many of those needs, he worries, may go unmet in the impoverished nation once the initial wave of international help leaves.

“What's the long-term future of that country when so many have missing limbs and the country doesn't have the resources to care for them?” Teahen asks.

During his stay in Haiti, Teahen slept on the ground in a tent 300 feet off the runway at the airport in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Planes with relief help from across the world were coming and going constantly, he says.

He flew to Haiti under the sponsorship of the Church of Scientology, which Teahen says has a commitment to disaster relief in the United States and around the world. Teahen, who is not a member of the church, first met church member and actor John Travolta during disaster work after Hurricane Katrina.

Travolta flew Teahen and a group of medical providers and government officials into Haiti last Monday. Teahen flew back to Florida on Tuesday in a giant C-17 cargo plane.

Teahen, who has worked at numerous disaster sites in the United States for the American Red Cross, also has spent time in the Darfur region of Sudan and in Sri Lanka after a tsunami hit there.

One of his specialties is helping disaster relief workers adjust once they leave a disaster scene and return home. Teahen says he, too, will need to adjust. He says he will sit down now with friends in the mental health field and talk about “the sights, smell, taste, dust and lack of sleep” he experienced in Haiti.

“I always sit down with my friends,” he said. “I have for years.”