Fog in Cedar Rapids delays area medics heading to Haiti

Fog delayed the flight of four area medics who were hoping to leave for Haiti to aid earthquake victims this afternoon.

Chris Buresh, Brett Faine, and Brett Mayne, all of Iowa City, and Dan Wing, of Tiffin, were scheduled for a 1:20 p.m. flight out of The Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids, but Mother Nature had other ideas.

Moments after stepping into the terminal, they realized their flight to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had been canceled. Buresh, a doctor at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, said the group would instead drive to the Moline, Ill. to try to catch a 3 p.m. flight.

They are on a tight schedule, because they have documented clearance to fly into Haiti only until 9 a.m. Tuesday. If they don't make it there by then, more paperwork will be required before they can enter the country.

The group and five other medics from around the United States plan to establish a triage station near Leogane, Haiti for at least the next 10 days. About 1.5 tons of supplies - including bandages, antibiotics, surgical instruments and water chlorinators - are supposed to arrive for the group Monday or Tuesday, Buresh said.

More supplies would be arriving through the Save the Children group, he said.

“I don't know what sort of impact we'll be able to make, but we're going to throw everything at this that we've got,” Buresh wrote in an e-mail to friends. “I feel like we've got some good partners on the ground, some great logisticians state side and a bunch of folks praying for us.”

Buresh has been making trips to Haiti for the past seven years to provide medical services. He and Faine, a clinical pharmacist, were just there conducting mobile clinics before returning to Eastern Iowa on Jan. 9. The 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit three days later.

If the local medics didn't make their flight in Moline, Buresh said they would drive to Chicago to catch a different flight.

“I've always really loved the people down there,” Buresh said. “It's killing me to not be down there helping out right now.”