Stacy Librandi was new to disaster relief when she arrived in Haiti in 2010. She walked onto the Port-au-Prince airfield and looked out at the sea of people in front of her. It looked like its own city: a crowd of a thousand buzzing and sweltering in the Caribbean heat, living in tents and haphazardly stacking mass amounts of supplies—food, water, clothing, medical aid—along the tarmac.
It was late January, and the catastrophe of the magnitude 7 earthquake was unfolding in Haiti. Librandi, part of the latest planeload of like-minded volunteers, was young, untrained and eager to make a difference in the face of devastation.
She brought only herself and some camping supplies in a small backpack with plans to stay no longer than a week. She stayed two weeks and then three—and now, 16 years later, Librandi remains in Port-au-Prince building and running HERO, or the Humanitarian Emergency Response Organization, the largest and foremost emergency medical ambulance and medevac service in Haiti.
A volunteer arrived in Haiti after the earthquake. Now, she runs a Haitian 911.
