On Jan. 12, 2010, Global Rescue began one of its most significant missions to date: responding to desperate cries for help coming from Port-au-Prince and outlying towns in earthquake-stricken Haiti. In the end, deployed security and medical teams rescued, evacuated and provided medical and security services to more than 50 people, including Haitians.  Global Rescue also transported medical supplies, humanitarian personnel and aid workers into the disaster zone by donating space on more than a dozen contracted fixed wing and helicopter flights from the Dominican Republic to Haiti.  

At the peak, Global Rescue had 25 medical and security personnel deployed to the disaster zone, which included veterans of the military’s elite special operations units and the company’s Chief Paramedic.

After the massive quake leveled the house where they were staying, a group of missionaries were left with piles of cinderblocks where there once were walls, eating what was left of their cheese and crackers until the group’s leaders formulated a plan. They waited for five hours at the U.S. Embassy, only to be told that the government could not get them out. The group leaders called their insurance company, who in turn hired Global Rescue to perform the evacuation. The group was taken to the airport under armed escort and then flown back to the United States.

“I was so relieved,” the insurance company’s Mike Ummel later told the Ft. Wayne News Sentinel. “I was afraid they were dead.”

Joining the evacuees were two graduate students from the University of California, a student from the Boston area and a Haitian woman who was aeromedically transported to a Ft. Lauderdale hospital with a life-threatening spinal injury.