It was difficult getting in to earthquake ravaged Haiti. Now it appears it will be hard to leave for Salt Lake City volunteers with Healing Hands for Haiti.

Jeffrey Randle, a Salt Lake City physician who founded the non-profit 12 years ago, and his team of 18 doctors and nurses were running out of supplies Friday in Port-au-Prince, 10 days after a magnitude 7.0 quake severely damaged much of the Caribbean nation.

On Thursday, Randle, a rehabilitation specialist at Salt Lake City's St. Marks Hospital, and his team evacuated their patients from a temporary clinic they had established at an LDS chapel. The Healing Hands building was badly damaged in the temblor.

For now, the folks they treated are housed at a hospital being operated by the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division in the southern end of Port-au-Prince.

With their patients safe and their own basic supplies dwindling, Randle said it was time to return to Utah, although he is uncertain how they will leave the country because of bottlenecks at the Port-au-Prince airport. A similar problem hampered their entry. The team had to make their way into Haiti earlier in the week overland from the Dominican Republic.

Although the Healing Hands group is a rehabilitation team, as opposed to an acute response medical team, they spent much of the last few days treating trauma patients who suffered broken limbs and other injuries. Many of the Haitians who suffered acute trauma during the Jan. 12 quake have been now been treated or are in hospitals awaiting surgery. The urgency now is tending to infection and disease, Randle said.

For Healing Hands volunteers, the long-term job of building and fitting prosthetic limbs and rehabilitating Haitians who had arms and legs amputated in the aftermath of the quake remains weeks and months away. The challenge in the coming years appears overwhelming at this point.

Randle said he and his team will return to Salt Lake City and begin planning the next phase of their work in Haiti. Immediately, that means finding and funding a temporary clinic while planning to rebuild the one lost in the quake. A new clinic will cost $4 to $5 million.

The non-profit Healing Hands' $400,000 annual budget had supported the modest clinic and a shop where Haitians were trained to make prosthetic limbs and do therapy.

Port-au-Prince remains in chaos, Randle said. But Healing Hands doctors and nurses must return to their jobs in Utah.

"Most of us left on a moment's notice," Randle said. "Our colleagues at home have filled in for us. But by Monday or Tuesday we should be back at work [in Utah]."

csmart@sltrib.com