Inside the Haiti rescue mission
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The Haitian children on the bus during their journey to the United States. -
Jamie McMutrie with one of the orphans and Gov. Ed Rendell.
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This story was written by staff writer Jon Schmitz, based on his reporting and that of Mackenzie Carpenter and Dennis B. Roddy.
Amid the din of aircraft engines in the darkness at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti, Jason Altmire watched anxiously as Denis McDonough, a top aide to President Barack Obama, poked away at his BlackBerry.
"All at once he gets this real broad smile on his face," Mr. Altmire said.
Mr. McDonough thrust the device at an Air Force officer standing on the grass alongside the runway of the shattered airport.
"Read this," he said.
On the screen was word that after more than five wrenching hours, the governments of the United States and Haiti had cleared 54 Haitian orphans to leave the earthquake-ravaged country for Pittsburgh, on a rescue mission headed by Mr. Altmire, the congressman from McCandless, and Gov. Ed Rendell.
Over the span of a few days, desperation and panic, political gamesmanship and a family's skillful enlistment of the highest echelons of government had combined to produce a happy ending.
But the euphoria of the moment was quickly drowned by more tension and heartache when a frenzied head count came up one child short, just as their C-17 Air Force cargo plane was preparing to take off.
It was one in a series of snags and setbacks that bedeviled the mission from its outset. Jamie and Ali McMutrie, the sisters from Ben Avon who were the orphans' caregivers, bolted from the aircraft in tears.
Air Force officers, desperate to get the plane off the airport's lone runway so others could land, were furious.
"We have to go. We have to shut the doors," Mr. Altmire recalled them saying.
When the doors finally closed late Monday, Ali McMutrie and 53 children from their BRESMA orphanage were aboard. Jamie stayed behind to find 2-year-old Emma, the missing child.
For the next three hours, on what should have been a triumphant flight to Florida, "there was a pall in the air," Mr. Altmire said. The C-17 was on the runway in Orlando, still slowing down, when Jamie's husband, Doug Heckman, phoned her from the plane and learned that she and Emma were OK.
On Wednesday, Jan. 13, the morning after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 and left much of Haiti in ruins, Jim Ferruchie, a staffer in Mr. Altmire's Aliquippa office, received a call from Diane McMutrie.
She said she had two daughters in Haiti and wanted to get them out, Mr. Altmire said.
"American citizens can leave anytime," the congressman noted. But as Mr. Altmire and his staff made inquiries, they learned two things: the sisters were adamant that the children from their orphanage had to come along, and "you can't just fly a plane into Haiti, pick up some kids and bring them home."
Mr. Altmire called Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's chief of staff, who promised to look into the situation. It was the first of countless calls traded by the highest sentinels of government over the next few days. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle and their staffs also got involved.
As lawmakers conferred and the McMutrie family scrambled for help, a competing rescue effort developed, breaking not only along party lines but foreshadowing a potential congressional race.
Mary Beth Buchanan, the former U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, began a bid to extract the sisters and orphans.
Ms. Buchanan, who has mulled a challenge to incumbent Democrat Mr. Altmire, spent four days getting permission to bring out the children, and gathering medical supplies, physicians to escort the children and -- the final link that did not fall in place -- an airplane cleared to land in Haiti.
At about the same time, a parallel effort was being organized by Leslie Merrill McCombs, senior consultant for UPMC government relations and a close associate of Mr. Rendell.
Ms. Buchanan said Ms. McCombs called her, grilled her for information, obtained a list of the children and ended up shipping medical supplies gathered as part of the Buchanan effort on the plane that carried Mr. Rendell and Mr. Altmire.
First Published January 24, 2010 12:00 am
