Living on the San Andreas Fault gives mountain residents a special bond with earthquake victims in Haiti. School children in Gorman are collecting money to send to the Red Cross, orthopedic nurse Kathy Weinstein from Pine Mountain has joined a UCLA team to provide medical support in Haiti and a Kern County firefighter has just returned from a spiritual mission there.

“When we heard about an earthquake in Haiti, like many others Mel and I sent money to relief agencies,” Weinstein said last week.

“I thought back to the Northridge quake and how frightening it was. But the pictures out of Haiti were devastating and money didn’t seem like enough.”

“I called Mel [her husband] and said, ‘What if I went to Haiti?’ Mel only said, ‘When?’”

Weinstein is going with a team of three doctors and nine RNs to work on a Navy hospital ship.

“I am not apprehensive about going to Haiti or about what I’ll see there. I expect it to be gruesome and beyond anything I’ve experienced in my career,” she said.

Gorman School’s 62 students put donations into a gallon jar this month. They wrote a check to the Red Cross on February 10.

Leland Davis, of the Kern County Fire Department, worked in Haiti with 13 others in a Firefighters for Christ mission, securing water sources for a town of 60,000.

This is part of the February 12, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you.