Press Awards
Joubert Dorleus couldn't wait to get off the ground.
For seven days, the 31-year-old Miami Beach firefighter and paramedic had waited for an opening to fly back to his homeland, where several family members live in Port-au-Prince or near the earthquake-ravaged capital. So on Tuesday, as he tossed around a football with another firefighter, Dorleus' anxiousness turned to anticipation. His flight had arrived.
Dorleus, of Deerfield Beach, is among a dozen Miami Beach firefighters who left Tuesday for Port-au-Prince aboard a chartered plane packed with doctors, nurses, Catholic missionaries and tons of supplies.
"Those are my people down there," Dorleus said Tuesday morning, as his colleagues packed their gear at Fire Station 2. "I was born there, so this means everything. It's definitely personal to me."
Once on the ground, the firefighters expected to split, with half staying in the country's capital and half venturing about 20 miles to the earthquake's epicenter, said Adonis Garcia, union president for Miami Beach's firefighters.
Garcia, a firefighter and paramedic who is also making the trip, said all 12 firefighters -- 10 men and two women -- volunteered their time. They either took vacation hours or switched shifts to make the trip, expected to last three to five days.
"We don't know what to expect," Garcia said.
Garcia said he began organizing firefighters interested in helping out in Haiti after Miami Beach businessman Michael Capponi called Sunday to say there was space on a Project Medishare flight.
Capponi said the chartered plane holds 167 passengers, and was expected to carry about 30 Haitian-American nurses, mission workers with the Catholic Church, the firefighters, 30 doctors and about 10,000 pounds of cargo to Port-au-Prince.
Capponi, who expected to stay with an employee's family outside Port-au-Prince, said the flight and aid mission was a joint effort with the United Way, Medishare, and Vivian Mannerud of Airline Brokers.
"The whole point of this is to figure out a system that works using a lot of local volunteers to get supplies and help where it's needed," Capponi said.
The mission isn't the only large relief effort made possible by those who work and live in Miami Beach. Others, like Russell Galbut's development company Crescent Heights, are helping Haiti in similar ways.
Crescent Heights has been providing planes and fuel, and has found others willing to donate planes to fly medical supplies and other goods to Haiti, said Bill Zubkoff, CEO of Hebrew Homes Plaza Network.
Zubkoff's not-for-profit company, which has two South Beach locations and others around Miami-Dade County, has been soliciting medical donations from visitors, keeping them at a Turnberry Associates hangar at Opa-locka Executive Airport. But Zubkoff said they wouldn't have the means to get the supplies to Haiti without Crescent.
"Without the planes," he said, "a lot of well-intentioned people couldn't deliver."
Galbut, a principal of Crescent Heights, said the company has helped deliver about 200 doctors and nurses to Haiti, along with medical supplies, and has brought some Haitians cleared by the U.S. Embassy back to Florida.
"Crescent gave planes first but it's amazing how many people have come forward and donated time, planes, supplies and have brought hurt and broken people back," he said.