Myron Kalfoglou, Firefighter and EMT with the Kensington Volunteer Fire Department of Montgomery County, Maryland, is not the kind of man to stand by when people need help. Seeing the devastation caused by the January 12 Haiti earthquake, he contacted the Haitian Embassy in Washington DC, booked a seat on a charter flight sponsored by the Church of Scientology, and on Sunday, February 14, he left for Haiti.
Not a Scientologist himself, Kalfoglou spent the next nine days working with the Scientology Disaster Response Team in Haiti. Like the other volunteers, his "hotel" was a sleeping bag on a concrete slab and he spent his days delivering medical care to refugees at IDP (internally displaced person) camps, orphanages and clinics. He also he handed out toys his two boys had given him for the children of Haiti.
"The devastation was very visible: buildings with large cracks, buildings with partial collapse, leaning this way or that way, buildings that had totally collapsed in a pancake fashion," he wrote in his journal. "Whatever electricity they once had now was gone as electrical wires hung from almost every pole to the ground."
It was 10 days of intense activity. If anything, the weekends were busier than the rest of the week. "In triage alone we saw over 1000 patients on Saturday and probably another 300-500 patients on Sunday. We treated severely dehydrated people, lots of internal medicine issues, a number of wound cases, some serious illnesses such as malaria and sepsis (full body infection)."
On returning home February 23, Kalfoglou wrote "I want to praise the people of Haiti. Despite all that they have endured, despite limitations with language, they were very appreciative of the efforts of the thousands of volunteers on the ground and the million of supporters across the world."
Kalfoglou's journal can be read in full at www.kalfoglou.com/haiti2010/Will_Work_for_MREs-Haiti_2010.pdf. He is one of more than 360 medical professionals transported to Haiti by the Church of Scientology for the relief effort. For more information on the Scientology Haiti Disaster Response visit the Volunteer Ministers blog at blog.volunteerministers.org.
