Stephenville native deployed to Haiti

He's among the nearly 2,000 Canadian troops deployed to Haiti as part of Operation HESTIA, the Canadian Force's humanitarian response to the Caribbean country's Jan. 12 earthquake.
Captain Mitchell Nurse, originally from Stephenville, flies one of six Griffon helicopters used in the military's air operations in Haiti.
Current priorities for aircraft crew include airlifting aid supplies, escorting road convoys, slinging loads of potable water, and Medevac between field hospitals and Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital.
"We're actually based out of Port-au-Prince, so we actually fly over the city several times a day," said Captain Nurse, in a telephone call to the Georgian last Friday.
"From what we've seen, it's the people in the cities that got hit the hardest because their buildings collapsed … there were five or seven story buildings, and now they're just five feet off the ground, the floors are just pancakes on top of each other."
The crews also make trips to more rural villages.
"Most of them aren't doing too bad," said Captain Nurse. "They have a lot of food because a lot of them have a lot of cattle that produce food."
He notes people in these areas are mostly in need of water and medical supplies.
"We have two hospitals set up in two different towns now, in Jacmel and LÉogÂne, and they're out helping the people every day and we also started humanitarian relief by flying in food and water to different communities."
But the work doesn't end there.
"It seems like everyday we're finding more groups of people who need help," says the 27-year-old. "For example, there's an island just about ten minutes away from here. And I guess about 50,000 people from the city, Port-au-Prince, actually left the city and went to this island, thinking that there'd be food and water there. But there's nothing on the island."
Captain Nurse said personnel are conducting airlifts to this island everyday, dropping off as much as water and supplies as they can.
He said while the mission doesn't have a definite end date, he's not missing the snow back home a whole lot.
"It's actually really hot, maybe between 35 and 38 degrees every day," he said. "It hasn't rained once since we've been here, which is three weeks now."
Captain Nurse also had a message for the folks back home.
"Say hi to my family, all the Nurses. I think about them all the time."
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