Even in the best of times, Haiti's crushing poverty, corruption and political unrest are enough to discourage the most starry-eyed humanitarian.

But the remedy to helplessness is "finding one thing you can do and do it well," says Salt Lake City physician Jeff Randle, describing the guiding principle behind Healing Hands for Haiti, a charitable nonprofit that provides wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and braces to Haitians who have lost limbs or were born with a disability.

Now, 12 years after the charity's founding -- as Randle braces for news of a life's work in ruins -- he finds comfort in his philosophy.

"We tell our team members, look at that child or that adult in front of you that day and say, 'What can I do to help this person?'" he says. "And if you've done that you've made a small drop in the bucket, though it seems now that bucket has been dumped out and we're starting over."

Wednesday, less than 24 hours after a magnitude 7 earthquake leveled much of Haiti, governments and aid agencies worldwide began marshalling supplies and volunteers for shipment to the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has loaded two planes with 160,000 pounds of food, tents, water filtration bottles and medical supplies; one departing from Denver as early as today and another leaving from Miami later this week. Other emergency supplies will travel by truck from the Dominican Republic, announced the church.

Still, the logistics of providing relief to a nation where, before the quake, 70 percent of aid failed to make its mark, proved daunting.

Flights were limited at Port-au-Prince's main airport and telecommunications spotty. Most of the hospitals were non-operational, according to the Associated Press.

And while, the LDS Church was able to confirm the safety of its missionaries in Haiti, most aid groups were still trying to account for missing workers. Like so many Utahns, Randle spent much of Wednesday scouring e-mail, social networking and news sites for any information.

Late Wednesday evening, he received word that most, if not all, of his predominantly Haitian staff of 45 nurses, technicians, housekeepers, and security people had survived. But there are two people still trapped in the rubble of a building located on a 6-acre compound owned by the charity.

Located in the foothills of Port-au-Prince, the compound is near the famed Montana Hotel, which was reportedly flattened. But the clinic reportedly survived with some damage.

"Our guards are still on duty. There has been no looting of our property as far as we know. Tonight the city is quiet as most are still in the streets counting the dead," said Randle, who suspects it could be weeks before he can ship a team out to assess the damage.

On the wall of Randle's office at St. Mark's Hospital is a photo of a shanty town located on a hillside near the clinic. He says he can't imagine how the tin and cinder block dwellings could have survived.

"If I think about it too much, I'll start to cry," said the rehabilitation specialist who first went to Haiti as an LDS missionary in 1982, witnessing "so much despair" and vowing to return and do something about it.

That something became clear six years later when, in the dead of winter, Randle approached a colleague at LDS Hospital, Lisa Bagley, and said, "Let's go the Caribbean."

That first year, 14 volunteers paid their way to Haiti and delivered rehabilitative therapy to 300 patients in 10 days, said Bagley, now a nursing administrator at Intermountain Medical Center. Today, teams are dispatched monthly and the nonprofit's budget has grown to $400,000, which supports the clinic and a shop where Haitians are trained make prosthetic limbs and do therapy.

The Salt Lake City-based nonprofit also works with schools to accept handicapped children who are ostracized as "taboo," Bagley said. And plans were under way to build a rehabilitation hospital. Malnutrition and disease are rampant, and amputations are a common remedy for severely infected injuries. But they're a death sentence for adults who survive on manual labor.

Randle hopes to return as soon as next week to help build makeshift clinics and triage victims. Another medical team that had made arrangements to travel to Haiti before the earthquake is on standby for possible deployment Saturday. Meanwhile, Randle is left hoping against hope for the survival of longtime friends and patients in whom he has invested so much.

"I wonder how I'll find the energy to start over," Randle said. "But I feel like it's my thing in life to do. Nothing in my profession has given me more satisfaction."

kstewart@sltrib.com

The Associated Press and Tribune reporters Erin Alberty, Peg McEntee and Peggy Fletcher Stack contributed to this report.