At approximately 1845 EDT this evening (January 19) the USCG Haiti Relief Joint Incident Center (JIC) located at the District 7 Public Affairs office in downtown Miami received a call from a CNN crew on the ground in Port au Prince, Haiti who were desperately seeking to arrange for an air medivac for a 69 year-old Haitian woman who was found alive in the rubble of Haiti’s National Cathedral with a broken femur and fractured pelvis.
The JIC Public Affairs Officer (PAO) team swung into action with PA1 Nash maintaining communications with the CNN ground team while LCDR Moorlag established communications with the captain of the CG Cutter Tahoma and LT Kerver contacted the USCG Operations Center. Communicating with the CNN ground team, the PA was seeking GPS coordinates of a location to route the rescue helicopter, a HH-65, Dolphin.
Auxiliarist James Simpson, working in the JIC quickly turned to Google to search for GPS coordinates for Haiti’s Presidential Palace as the medivac site. After locating the GPS coordinates, they were verified using Wikipedia. We then passed the GPS coordinates to LDCR Moorlag, LT Kerver, and PA1 Nash, who in turned pass them to all parties as the rendezvous point. The coordinates were eventually passed to the air crew aboard the HH-65 and were used to successfully locate the rescue team on the ground and effect the medivac.
While credit should be given to the entire JIC team for working in concert to effect this medivac, the actions of LCDR Moorlag, LT Kerver, and PA1 Nash were well above and beyond the role of a normal PAO and should certainly be commended. The quick thinking of Auxiliarist Simpson in turning to Google to locate the GPS coordinates for the presidential palace should also be recognized.
The JIC has now established lines of communications with both CNN and the Operations Center in the event this situation repeats itself.
~GJA 01-18-10