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A nurse on Lynch’s team holds “SunSung,” who lost both parents in the Haiti earthquake.
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Haitian children gather at a makeshift clinic in the quake-ravaged country.
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A pediatric ICU was set up at this field hospital in Haiti.
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The tent hospital where Lynch and other medical volunteers worked to assist the people of Haiti.
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First Lt. Mike Lynch (right) and the medical team he led to Haiti for California Southern Baptist Disaster Relief.
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First Lt. Mike Lynch accepts CAP’s 2009 Character Development Instructor of the Year award from Maj. Gen. Amy S. Courter, national commander, at the national conference last August in San Antonio.
Editor’s note: The April-June 2010 issue of Civil Air Patrol Volunteer, available now, features an article on another CAP member involved in a medical mission to Haiti in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake. See pages 19-21.
Jennifer S. Kornegay
Contributing Writer
HAITI — On Jan. 12, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked the nation of Haiti, and the world watched the news in horror as reports of the devastation kept pouring in, worsening by the hour. The calls for assistance were almost instant, as was the overwhelming response.
People from all over the world donated money and supplies, and thousands more vacated their own lives and routines to travel to Haiti and offer hands-on help in the rescue and recovery process.
It’s no surprise that Dr. Mike Lynch, a first lieutenant in the California Wing’s Bakersfield Composite Squadron 121, was among those who went to Haiti. After all, CAP is made up of volunteers who generously give of their time and talents on an ongoing basis.
Lynch pitches in for CAP whenever needed, and he also volunteers with the California Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. Through this group, he led a medical team to Haiti from March 2-10.
“What you saw on television did not do the devastation justice at all,” Lynch said. “It was unbelievable to see; just the property damage was so extensive. It looked like 80 to 90 percent of all the homes in the neighborhood where we were had completely collapsed.”
Lynch has been involved with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief group for 17 years. His background as a clinical psychologist has served him well, as has his status as a pastor.
“Whenever we deploy a team for a disaster, we send a chaplain with them,” he said. “I am a Southern Baptist pastor and a psychologist, so I was assigned as chaplain to this team.
“There were eight of us, and we were with two other medical groups from Louisiana and South Carolina as well as a damage assessment team, so there was a total of 60 of us working at various locations in the Port-au-Prince area.”
Lynch’s California team included five doctors, one physician’s assistant and two registered nurses.
Lynch and his fellow relief workers began their endeavors at the University of Miami field hospital set up at the airport.
“Our first assignment was to establish a pharmacy for the hospital,” he said. “But when we got there, the medical director asked what specialists we had on our team. I had two surgeons and an infectious disease doctor, so they ended up putting us to work in the hospital for two days.”
Lynch served as the psychologist for the pediatric ward, counseling hospitalized children and their families. He also spent a lot of time counseling other doctors and nurses who had already been in Haiti for a while.
“The work they were doing and the things they were seeing were taking a real emotional and physical toll on them,” he said. “I also spent time counseling family members that lost someone at the hospital.”
Lynch and his team set up community clinics as well and treated more than 600 patients in three days.
“I handled all the referrals for psychological issues, and I probably dealt with about 35 or 40,” he said. “We all stayed very busy.”
Lynch is always looking for ways to use his specific skills to fill a need. That search led him to join CAP in January 2007.
“The squadron needed some emergency services guys, and I have that experience, but I also brought some moral leadership,” he said.
His Critical Incident Stress Management work with Southern Baptist Relief and his work with CAP go hand-in-hand, and he’s used the training and different experiences from each to help him in the other.
“I am the Pacific Region Critical Incident Stress Management officer and the deputy Critical Incident Stress Management officer for the California Wing, so I’ve been doing CISM work with CAP for about three years, and the CISM training I’ve gotten through CAP helped in Haiti, especially dealing with the death,” he said.
Lynch is also part of CAP’s chaplain corps, as well as a character development instructor. In fact, for 2009, he was named CAP’s national Character Development Instructor of the Year.
As a CISM officer, Lynch conducts debriefings after crashes that result in the death of a CAP member.
“The first major one, we had lost a former wing commander from California and the current wing commander from Nevada,” he said, referring to the crash Nov. 8, 2007, south of Las Vegas in which Cols. Ed Lewis and Dion E. DeCamp were killed. “Both died in a crash on their way to the California Wing Conference.”
Lynch and the CICM team carried out 66 individual and group interventions and counseling sessions onsite at the conference, helping CAP members deal with the tragedy.
“The personal and group care that has to be given to CAP members and /or their families is extremely important to help them through their struggle with stress and grief and to help them move beyond that incident,” Lynch said.
In any situation involving a sudden death, like those resulting from a plane crash or a natural disaster, one of the first things he must address is post traumatic stress. Sometimes, circumstances make this difficult.
“You have to help them work through it, and get them back into their normal routine,” he said. “But in Haiti, there was no normal routine to get them back to; so much was gone. I had to find something to take their minds off their own situation.”
Lynch worked with what he had in Haiti.
“I was counseling one man who had been studying to be a teacher, so I found a church that was holding school, but was in need of teachers and got him involved with that,” he said. “Once he could teach, he was able to move his focus from the disaster to the recovery and be a part of that recovery for others. It still takes time, but pushing forward helps.”
Lynch said he feels like he and those with him made a real difference during their time in Haiti, and he’d do it all over again if asked.
“As we were leaving, I felt like we had done a good job,” he said. “I know we made a change for the better in some lives. We got 600 people to see a doctor who would not have otherwise.
“I’d go back again. Doing disaster work with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief and CAP is an important part of my life.”
But Lynch knows it’s not really about him.
“The work I did honors God, honors the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, honors CAP and honors anyone involved in disaster relief services,” he said. “And it helps other people who need help.
“That’s the reason I do it.”
