Local woman survives second major earthquake in Haiti

When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince, haiti back in 2010, a Green Bay woman in that country went to the capital to help the injured. Fast forward eight years and she's back in Haiti as another earthquake hit. The latest earthquake, was 5.9 on the Richter Scale and hit the northern part of the country pretty hard.

Brittany Galvin, a Green Bay native, is talking about her latest Haitian earthquake. The severely damaged the hospital where she works in Gros-Morne, even though its epicenter in Port-de-Paix is quite a distance away.

According to Galvin, "We had a pretty big trembler here. It actually hit about two hours north in Port-de-Paix, but for some reason we have been the hardest hit city."

Galvin, a nurse practitioner, estimates about 80% of the homes in Gros-Morne are damaged and the 60-bed hospital where she works really took a hit. She says, "The town is functioning pretty normal, it's just no one has a house to go into at nighttime. Our pediatric department had to completely remove all of the children from that area, it's really dangerous. Our men's ward had to move into the women's ward and unfortunately the TB ward too also had to move into the women's ward, so you have highly infectious patients with men and women, mixed together, all in one big room. It's not an ideal situation."

But it's one Galvin is determined to make better for those patients and the people of Gros-Morne, a mission her parents back here in Green Bay fully support.

Her dad, Bill Galvin, says, "She's at risk, but she loves what she's doing and she's willing to put up with the risk to do what she's doing and we've kind of come to the conclusion that that's where her heart is and that's probably going to spend the rest of her life and so be it, that's the path that she and God have chosen, and good for her."

Galvin is asking for help, online, to raise funds for repairing and rebuilding what's been lost.

She adds, "Any little bit helps, so if anyone can help know that 100% of their donation will go directly to helping those in need here."