The right person with the right skills can make a world of difference in a time of need. Susan Bruns is easing the suffering in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, using nursing skills she learned in eastern Kentucky with the help of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA).

Susan, 35, earned her nursing degree from Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in May 2008 with financial help from WIA, which is administered in eastern Kentucky by the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP), and delivered under contract in Bell County by Bell-Whitley Community Action Agency (BWCAA).

She chose to become a nurse not only to help support her family but also because she also knew nursing skills would be useful in her calling as a missionary to Titanyen, Haiti, where she and her family moved to from Bell County in June.

She could not have imagined how soon her skills would be desperately needed on the Caribbean island nation.

Susan settled into a routine working in a free burn clinic operated by Global Outreach International. She and her family had been in Haiti only seven months when the earthquake struck on January 12.

“We heard this rumble in the distance and it got louder and louder,” Susan said.

Trained for “tornadoes and not earthquakes,” the first instinct Susan and her kids had was to “hit the floor.” But she quickly realized what was happening and hurried her children out of the house.

“It was very hard to move around. If felt like walking on a trampoline while someone else is jumping on it. We heard dishes crashing, bookshelves slamming. The children were very scared and crying and screaming,” Susan said.

After the ground settled the family barely had time to calm down and retrieve their dog from the house before the first victims of the quake started to arrive. The first person to arrive at Susan’s home was carrying a toddler who had been hit in the face with a falling stone block.  Then badly burned people started arriving from a local flourmill that had caught fire.

Susan and another nurse from the mission clinic started soaking burns and treating people for shock. People who could help began gathering towels, water and other supplies to treat the wounded as they came in. Doctors from a nearby clinic that had collapsed in the quake came over and started helping take care of patients.

Even in rural Titanyen, the scope of the human suffering and devastation caused by the earthquake was overwhelming, Susan said. Soon the small clinic was overrun with people with serious burns, broken or crushed bones, and other injuries.

“They just kept bringing them in, bringing them in by the truckload,” she said. Later, as the hospitals in the nearby city of Port Au Prince filled, injured began arriving from there, too.

Faced with such a wide variety of injuries and such a frantic pace, Susan was grateful for the depth and quality of the nursing training she received with the help of WIA.

“It seemed like everything I learned just came flooding back,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without the medical training and the Lord’s help.”

During those first few hectic hours, Susan said, her faith and the desperate need around her carried her through.

“It was hard and it was overwhelming but I really feel like God gave us the grace to get through it. You had no time to think it through. You just had to keep going,” Susan said.

It was 10 p.m. when she finally got to take a short break to hug her kids.

Susan said everyone at the mission pitched in. Some of the missionaries looked after unattended children. Susan’s husband helped with splinting wounds and transported people to their homes – if their homes were still there.

“Many of their homes were gone when he took them back,” she said.

It was especially difficult to see the injured children, Susan said. Many were seriously injured or in shock. She especially remembers one little boy who didn’t cry although his heel had been crushed by a block.

“Even when you want them to cry, sometimes they don’t,” Susan said.

She said in those kinds of situations medical professionals must to be able to separate themselves from their feelings about such pain in order to continue to function and be able to help the injured.

“You have to do that to keep your own sanity,” Susan said.

Being able to use her training in this disaster has made Susan an even bigger supporter and endorser of the WIA program and the opportunities it provides for eastern Kentuckians of all ages to train for rewarding careers.

“Take your education seriously,” Susan advises. “Learn all you can, because you never know when you’re going to need it.”

Pam Wilson, a Global Career Development Facilitator at BWCAA, was the career counselor who helped Susan get the assistance she needed to finish her nursing degree. Pam even helped Susan get her first RN job at a nursing home before she left Bell County for the mission in Haiti.

Pam wept as she listened to Susan’s story by phone from Haiti, saying she is glad to have been part of helping Susan get the training she needed to help so many people.

“I’m thankful that you’re there,” Pam said.

The Bruns family intends to return to the United States for a six-week break in April. Susan said they might then go back to Haiti “just as long as the Lord wants us there.”

For more information on Workforce Investment Act services available in Bell County, contact Pam Wilson at 606-337-3044.