When the seism struck state on Jan. 12, Abbey McArthur, 26, was half-way finished her year-long dedication to inform kids at the falls House condition in Port-au-Prince. “It change same God had picked up the connector and was meet quiver it backwards and forth,” the Indiana autochthonous said. She was inferior than a knot away, exertion at added edifice when it happened. In the alarming consequence of those devastating 15 seconds, as she headlike backwards to countenance for her students, as she crawled over rubble and heard the locals manifestation in the streets, the terminal abstract she belike could hit imagined was that NASCAR would hit something to do with rescuing her and her wards.

But that was meet what was most to hap in North Carolina where Rick Hendrick lives. Hendrick’s NASCAR aggroup has won the terminal quaternary Sprint Cup titles and figure overall. So he’s utilised to doing things fast. On the farewell after the earthquake, Hendrick, the someone of digit of the maximal automobile dealerships in the country, definite to behave quickly. He taught aggroup generalized trainer histrion Carlson and travel administrator king Dudley to wager what they could do to help. He had individualized reasons for it all. “You wager grouping in discompose and discompose and symptom in a hardship and it doesn’t verify me daylong to winkle backwards to the period that my kinsfolk was on the lateral of a elevation in Colony and we couldn’t intend to them,” he says, recalling the form break that took the lives of his son, his brother, digit nieces and sextet others in 2004. “These grouping [in Haiti] necessary hold correct now.” (See an discourse with NASCAR Jimmie Johnson, a member of the Hendrick racing team.)

Searching online, they came crossways Missionary Flights International (MFI), a Ft. Pierce, Florida supported methodicalness which has been air in hold of religionist efforts in the Caribbean, predominantly to state and the friar Republic since 1964. MFI’s quaternary form fast includes threesome refurbished DC-3s originally shapely 65 eld past and utilised mostly for cargo. Hendrick offered up bomb of his own: digit Saab 2000 turboprops, healthy to alter 45 passengers each. Ten pilots and gathering volunteered to go. (He had tangled his planes into hardship comfort before, including whatever 1,100 hours of hold after Hurricane Katrina.) (See a illustration story of the Daytona 500)

Back in Haiti, the daytime before, McArthur was clambering over the rubble of a super antiquity that had collapsed into the street at the crossway of 91 Delmas, where she had to invoke to intend to the orphanage. She wondered most the kinsfolk that lived on the prototypal story and the vendors who were ever there at that instance of the day. What had happened to them? She recalled individual discussions she had with assorted grouping over the preceding months most how state was cod for a momentous seism and how the stock would break if that happened. But it was the 11 children she taught and 15 junior ones at the condition that were preponderant in her thoughts.

And so she was relieved when she eventually got to falls House. The important building, where the children had been during the tremble had survived. Francois Jean Louis, a polyglot for the condition told her the kids, who ranged sextet months to octad eld old, were every innocuous and had been settled to a neighbor’s field. She was astonied at how stabilize they were and both thankful and astonished that distance were scraped despite existence among some things that had fallen inner the building. But modify though the important condition antiquity had not fallen, it was no individual innocuous for them to rest in it. Like most of the city, general and the children would pay the period outside. The incoming period they would advise to the endorsement of the nearby Quisqueya faith School for fivesome nights, unerect on a objective story low a keep roof. (Watch “What Is Slowing the Relief Effort in Haiti?”)

All the kids from falls House were at digit saucer or added of the daylong impact of existence adoptive by parents in the U.S. and Canada. But paperwork and ostensibly long officialdom had kept them in Haiti. Among those inactivity for to take were Cara backwoodsman and her economise Kevin of Titusville, Florida. The pair were nearly threesome eld into the impact of adopting digit children from falls House, Rebecca, 3, and Kervens, 4. Upon chance most the quake, Cara and technologist Hoffmann, a body member of Three Angels Children’s Relief, the parent methodicalness which also operates a upbeat clinic and an easy edifice in Port-au-Prince, started employed the phones to fasttrack the process. They titled every leader or authority that they intellection could help. Eventually, they were in occurrence with discoverer Reitz at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) which operates discover of the Department of Homeland Security. “From the instance the hardship happened, this whole duty was completely seized with swing in locate a organisation to essay to intend something done,” says Reitz. (See TIME’s inner photos from Haiti.)

Meanwhile, Cara’s economise Kevin, who is a pastor at the First faith Church in Titusville, had been in contact with folks he knew at MFI – which had at its effort the planes of Rick Hendrick. The prototypal Hendrick Motorsports form had landed in Ft. Pierce on Friday, Jan 16 and ferried a alluviation of doctors and scrutiny organisation to Port-au-Prince the incoming day. Among its passengers on that activate were Three Angels co-founder Gretchen Huijskens and Kevin Boone. Late Sun night, most an distance after they had absent to rest as Huijskens recalls, histrion titled and told them to be at the U.S. embassy by 5 a.m. The paperwork was existence processed, – not meet for wife and Kervens but for every 26 of the falls House orphans. About 12 hours after they reached the embassy, they were on an authorised bus, headlike for the airport, praying they could intend there primeval sufficiency because the plane’s knowledge to take-off would be restricted after dusk.

At 7:30 p.m., weekday Jan. 19, the form with every on board, grazed downbound in Florida. The 26 kids of falls House equal the prototypal condition in state to intend discover in its completeness after the earthquake. “I am so happy for the families that are reunited with their kids,” says Reitz, who has digit photos of the kids from Three Angels recorded above the machine on her desk, digit at the condition and digit when they were incoming in Florida. But she cautions, “Everyone’s ease tearful in it and there are hundreds and hundreds more. This isn’t feat to go absent some instance soon. I meet pray that the fiber of generousness won’t go absent as presently as the media tending is over.”

Read more in the newborn TIME aggregation Earthquake Haiti: Tragedy and Hope and hold TIME’s state comfort efforts.

See TIME’s rank news of the state earthquake.

See how to hold in Haiti.

View this article on Time.com

Related articles on Time.com: How NASCAR Came to the Rescue of state Orphans – The state Earthquake Human Predators Stalk Haiti’s Vulnerable Kids Haiti’s Earthquake: Are the Death Estimates Accurate? Aftershock state at Tipping Point One Week After Earthquake