BOSTON -- Relief efforts continue in Haiti Monday -- one month after thousands were killed in an earthquake.

NewsCenter 5's Kimberly Bookman spoke to a local woman who just returned from spending three weeks helping people in Port-au-Prince.

In a weather-resistant suitcase, Laura Blank has everything from a satellite phone to a solar panel for charging.

When the disaster relief specialist was sent to Haiti the day after the earthquake, she thought she was prepared.

"I saw the immediate aftermath of the disaster and it was devastating and it was sad. You saw children and bodies and the smell of death everywhere. In the car, we'd roll the windows up," Blank said.

She said she witnessed hospitals treating patients out in open parking lots, kids bandaging their own wounds and malnourished orphans looking desperately for food.

"There were days when I went out to the field, came back exhausted thinking, 'This isn't going to get any better,'" Blank said.

She said she'd try to sleep on a cot propped up by rolls of toilet paper in the World Vision office. But after three weeks on the ground, she said she saw the people beginning to recover.

"The UN had started posting jobs and people were lined up and down the road probably a half mile with two to three people deep in the line trying to get their resume out or their contact information to get a job," Blank said. "Markets started to open along the street."

Blank said although it's been one month since the quake, not to forget the victims.

"There's so many Haitian communities around the U.S. -- Boston, Miami -- engaged in what's happening there," she said.