> DanDeseret News in Haiti: Utah chopper pilots feed hungry Haitians
By Dennis Romboy
Deseret News
Published: Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010 7:11 p.m. MST
PORT-AU-PRINCE. Haiti — A crowd gathers as soon as the helicopter
circles an open field looking for a spot to set down between crumbled
houses. Hungry Haitians gazing skyward come running from all
directions knowing food is on the way.
For the guys in the sky, dropping 110-pound bags of beans to starving
people is a risk-reward venture.
It's no problem when the sacks are pushed out the door from 50 feet
up, as long as the pusher braces against the skids. But when Orem's
Dan Gardner doled out the sorely needed staple after the chopper
settled in a field outside one Haitian village, he was mobbed like a
rock star.
With a slit in the bag, he tried to orderly pour beans into buckets
people carried to the landing site. It didn't last long. Dozens of
villagers engulfed him, tugging at his arms and unintentionally
whacking him with their buckets. The muscular, cage-fighting Gardner
said he felt threatened by a man who pulled a machete from his waist,
but handed it another man so he could more easily maneuver through the
crowd.
Gardner returned to the helicopter battered but exhilarated.
And there is method to the madness.
"It's really fun when we get to deliver it to the mothers and
children, not just the biggest guys," he said.
Gardner is one of several friends or associates of pilot Jeremy
Johnson, who has been in Haiti for more than a week since the Jan. 12
earthquake delivering food from his blue Eurocopter EC-130.
The St. George man and the earthquake relief effort known as
utahhaitirelief.org have earned can-do reputations. And they attract
random volunteers looking to do some good.
"These guys are the ultimate yes men," says Sven Peltonen, a New
Jersey firefighter who latched on to the group a couple of days ago.
But he doesn't mean they're self-serving. They just have a hard time
saying no.
Between helicopter drops Sunday, relief workers from Samaritan's Purse
wandered over to the Johnson's supply base on the Port-au-Prince
airport infield needing a ride to a remote village where earthquake
rubble made driving impossible. About 30 minutes later they were en
route in one of the two other helicopters Johnson owns.
Johnson later swung over to a landing spot in the city to ferry two
sick infants and an injured young woman to a hospital near his base
camp in the Dominican Republic.
"Believe me, I don't want to say no, but I do," he said. "I can't do
everything."
But he certainly seems to.
Johnson also is clever with his chopper. He parked perpendicular on a
pier in the Port-au-Prince harbor and unloaded the beans on the water
side, effectively blocking the running masses until he lifted off.
People were then able to scoop as much as they could in their shirts.
While Johnson deftly pilots the helicopter, guys like Gardner,
Peltonen, Mike Fleming and Trevor Williams do the grunt work.
"We're the workhorses," said Fleming, a BYU finance grad-turned-happy
wanderer whose smile never leaves his face.
"We just do it. If it needs to get done, you just do it. You don't
have to be told what to do all the time. You just figure it out and do
it."
As food drops continued Sunday, Fleming and Gardner figured out the
best way to get beans to everyone — not just the most bullying men —
was to jump out the chopper door with a bag over the shoulder, slice
it with a Rambo knife, shake the sack empty and get out of the way
before the thundering horde overtook them.
"Get out, get in, don't get hurt" was the mantra of the day. Still,
scratches and bruises were part and parcel to the work, and apparently
well worth the risk.
"That's what I was born for, bro," Gardner exclaimed after one run.
"That's what I was born for."
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