Day One

I will write everything here that I remember from the earthquake and the days after. I know that everyone wants to know what happened, and I understand that, but it is very painful for me to talk about these things and I hope you will all understand if I don't really want to talk about what happened for a little while.

Tuesday, 12 January
I spent most of the day cleaning my house. Stephane got home early and we worked on editing the English version of a report his office needed to send to headquarters. At 453, I was standing in the kitchen making bread crumbs to use for dinner that night; I was going to attempt making homemade black bean burgers. I heard what sounded like a really big truck coming down our street, a really loud rumbling noise. Then I noticed the dishes were shaking and I felt vibrations, and I thought the big truck must have hit something, maybe our big metal gate on the compound. I looked up to ask Stephane what was going on and saw him running out of the door, just hauling ass without a word (this is actually really funny to me, even now), I saw one of my cats running toward the bedroom (she hides under the bed when she is scared, which is often), and then I realized that the *whole*house* was shaking and I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, our crappy house is falling down!' It wasn't until I started to go out of our kitchen door and saw that our tall compound wall was swaying back and forth as if it were made of styrofoam instead of concrete that I realized the whole world was falling down.

I thought briefly of getting the cats, then thought they were probably safest under the bed, even if the house did fall down, and in any case I didn't think I could get to the bedroom in time to get them. Then I had to decide whether to stay in the house that may or may not collapse or to brave running down the narrow alley between our house and the now-mobile barrier wall, which would also involve running underneath our precariously constructed cistern. I made a run for it and got to our front courtyard, where our guard and landlady were screaming for God's mercy and Stephane greeted me with, 'It's an earthquake and I didn't tell you!' (haha)

All of this sounds like it took a long time, but I was out of the house and in the courtyard probably 10 seconds after I heard the 'big truck.' The initial tremor lasted less than 30 seconds in our estimation, but was followed rather quickly by a couple of big aftershocks. A cloud of dust enveloped us, so thick that we could see neither the sun nor the big Digicel building (one of the very few American-style office buildings in PAP) that is less than a quarter mile from our house; people kept saying that it had collapsed b/c they couldn't see it through the dust. After a few minutes, it became apparent that the Digicel building was still intact, but the hospital across the street (i.e., on the corner of our street) had collapsed. Stephane and I did some running about to find a place that was relatively open, free from large, close walls, tall buildings, and trees. The best we could find was a neighbor's courtyard across the street, neighbors to whom we had never spoken.

Throughout all of this, I was still wearing my cleaning clothes, which consisted of VERY short shorts (like you could probably see the bottom of my butt cheeks -- haha), a cardigan, and a pair of flip-flops that I only wear around the house b/c they are half-broken. Clearly not prepared for running out of my house.

Thousands of people were surging through the streets, there were screams, crying. A woman came into our compound with a cut so deep that you could see two inches of fat and muscle tissue. Several minutes later she ran out of the compound delirious, screaming down the street. Someone passed carrying a dead baby, explaining to everyone and noone that she was too small to run and that he couldn't get to her in time. Stephane just kept pacing back and forth, occasionally saying, 'Shit.' I felt like I wanted to vomit, but didn't want to do so on our neighbor's bushes, and my legs were wobbly, but I couldn't seem to sit down. A small panic erupted on our street when we saw a thick plume of black smoke rising from the direction of a gas station about 1/3 of a mile from the house. The black smoke became piqued with flashes of orange and then bright yellow, indicating that the gas was on fire. Fearing an explosion, most people came rushing up the hill on which our house was placed. The gas burnt and there were some small explosions, but it seems more like the gas just burnt itself out without a huge fireball.

Stephane's mom managed to walk to our house, which was a huge relief, as her house is rickety under the best of circumstances and we were both afraid of what had happened there. Miraculously, her house, though now unsafe, was still standing, which allowed her, her 83 year old mother, and two of Stephane's cousins to get out safely. Mommy Lu, the grandmother, was knocked to ground by the force of the tremor, but she did not break anything; a small miracle, really, considering how frail she is.

Babeth went back to her house after a few minutes, leaving Stephane to continue pacing and me to continue standing, listening to the roar of panic and distress in the streets. A few minutes later, Stephane's cousin Sarah and her fiance Alex arrived along with their friend Junior. They had apparently been downtown near Champs Mars when all of this happened and were carrying a digital camera, with which they captured images of the gradual collapse of le Palais National, formerly the only building in PAP that made one feel somewhat awe-stricken.

By this time, it was getting dark and the aftershocks, though still continuing, were becoming less severe. Our house was still standing, but was visibly weakened (fissures, doors didn't fit in frames, etc.), but we decided to go back in to get supplies for the night. I told Stephane I would go in to get blankets, a flashlight, candles, matches, and a can of peanuts and soynuts that we had in the kitchen so that we would have some protein-rich food. I also grabbed a pair of pants and some tennis shoes. I told him to grab a mostly empty 5 gallon bottle of water that was on our countertop; he also took his computer bag. Oddly, the Internet, which barely works on a good day, was still up at this point and my stepdad and one of Stephane's cousins called right as I was walking out of the door, so I was able to tell them that we were alive, but leaving the house. Babeth's protege, Marc Eli, arrived around this time and we decided to all walk to Petionville Club, a private sports club located just above town about three miles from our house where they have a one-hole 'golf course' that was the only open space in town Stephane could think of (Champs Mars was going to be flooded with people and we did not feel safe going there). I wanted to stay at the house, feeling that the neighbor's courtyard was pretty okay, and also fearing what we would find in the dark streets outside. But I decided to trust Stephane and we all set off.

It is difficult to find words to describe what that walk was like. It felt like wading through the topmost level of Hell. In addition to the ubiquitous swirling masses of people, there downed power lines, whole blocks of buildings collapsed, and spots on the streets that in the dark could be either water or vomit or blood, you just stepped on it no matter what because there was nowhere else to go. We passed a school that had collapsed, covered by parents and family members frantically trying to dig out their children. Just past the school was the first of many dead bodies we encountered over the next few days, a woman lying face down, her limbs akimbo as if she had fallen flat from the sky. At some point I scratched myself on the sharp points of a huge metal gate that had fallen from someone's compound entrance, but that was my only 'injury'. We wound our way to Canape Vert, the destruction becoming more total as we got further from our street, which had been hit comparatively lightly, aside from the hospital at the bottom and a neighbor's house that lost its front.

To get over to Ave John Brown/Lalue, the road that leads to Petionville Club, we had to cross a ravine, but every street we tried was either blocked by debris taller than ourselves, or the bridge was out and the ravine too deep to cross otherwise. At this point, we had been walking for nearly an hour and were at best half-way to our desired destination. We contemplated going back, but decided to push on, turning back toward the way we came and veering off into Bourdon. Junior left at some point before this, scrambling nimbly over wreckage, determined to keep going, to try to find his family, who lived in Canape Vert.

When we got to Lalue, we saw cars in the street for the first time, but there was no point in them being there since, as we discovered, the road was totally blocked not far up the mountain. It was blocked by two buses that had been half-crushed by a falling retaining wall. People were trying to dig out trapped passengers, though the silence of the buses and the angles of the bodies that were visible seemed to indicate that there was no one alive to find. By this point, the road was rather quiet, no more screaming, just a steady hum of people talking amongst themselves or muttering continuous prayers. To the right, the side that backs up to the ravine, house after house was collapsed, houses that we had driven past day after day when we lived in that neighborhood. There were injured people sitting on the sidewalk staring impassively, cradling broken arms or ignoring the blood on their faces.

Somewhere along here, we stopped for a few moments so that Sarah and Alex could go down their street to check on their house, worried that one of Alex's cousins who had just moved to Haiti might be there. They returned grim and bewildered; their house was completely flattened, they had no idea if Cliff or anyone else was in there. Junior was with them, silent and tense; he had arrived at his sister's apartment building to find its four stories toppled into one, with no sign of his sister or anyone who could say they had seen her. Normally ebullient with a ready smile, Junior barely spoke the rest of the night, even when spoken to.

While waiting for Alex and Sarah, the rest of us waited across the street from a UN compound, which was constantly opening and closing its barbed wire improvisation of a gate to allow people and vehicles in and out. Stephane and I walked across to see if they had information about rally points or shelters or anything else, but it quickly became apparent that they were not able to offer anything. The soldier we were speaking to began to get teary, saying, 'I'm sorry, we can't help you. We're just trying to find our own people -- they're trapped, you know, and dying. There are no hospitals for us to take them to. There is nothing.' We had not yet heard that the UN headquarters had collapsed, trapping more than 100 of their staff and killing the Brazilian general heading the peacekeeping mission along with several of his top deputies.

After about almost two hours of walking (briskly) through the city, we arrived at Petionville Club. I expected to find a lot of people like us, but instead there were only about 12 people there -- some expatriates, some Haitian-Americans, all relatively wealthy. Once the guard let us through the gate, we were met by a clean-looking white guy who seemed totally nonchalant about the situation, inviting us to use the facilities freely. This apparently did not include sharing the spaghetti that the rest of the group was eating when we arrived, nor did it include having a glass of whisky or a beer, although some of us desperately needed one and it was clearly available. There were about four kids between the ages of 11 and 14 playing hide and seek or gossiping about friends, all speaking English. The general impression was that the owner had offered shelter to some friends, who were making free with the supplies of the bar and kitchen, while we were simply grateful to have arrived at our target.

We soon learned that the American Ambassador lived next door, so Stephane and I once again attempted to glean some information, once again without success. It seemed that telephone communications with the Embassy were not available, it was strictly radio. But most of the radios were dead, which meant that we could sit outside the gate and wait until they managed to make contact, but we gave up after about 30 minutes and five aftershocks.

We went back in to the club, gathered our few belongings, bid everyone a good evening, and headed out to the golf course. We examined the course, judged the distances surrounding trees might fall if they were jolted out of their complacency, and picked a spot that seemed the least likely to involve being crushed in the event of a second quake. Ostensibly we were going to sleep. But I'm sure I need not tell you that was difficult. Actually, Junior fell directly asleep after a couple of cigarettes and Marc Eli before him; sometimes sleep is the best refuge. As we sat on the golf course, there was a vista of the city below spreading before us, and we could hear the din of millions of people below. Initially the noise was just that -- innumerable conversations, the occasional wail, general chatter. But around 11pm, the noise turned into organized clusters of hymns and prayers. This amazing display of faith and solidarity was enough to lull me to uneasy sleep a few times, though it was always short-lived, interrupted by aftershocks, anxiety, or people talking nearby.

Around 1130pm, one of the women from the group at the club came down to our area with her pre-adolescent daughters. The woman seemed oblivious to the fact that we were trying our darnedest to block out the days' events and find solace in sleep, insisting instead on re-hashing it all, whispering through the parts that she thought would scare her daughter, apparently unaware that she was far more scared than her child. She did share that the radio had reported the earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter scale and that everything between Jacmel and Port-au-Prince was levelled. Intellectually, I knew this was probably right -- a quake of that magnitude could do that level of damage -- but I just couldn't accept this as an actual fact. It was inconceivable that the Jacmel of my memory would no longer exist, even though that very night almost everything I had in Haiti no longer existed in its 'proper' form.

Eventually I convinced Stephane that it was okay for him to stop talking to her and lay down, that it was good to lay down and rest even if it did not lead to sleep. But it did; I heard him snoring pretty soon after that, at which point I was able to sleep, too.

This repose ended close to 130am with a huge aftershock that continued for around 15 seconds. The hymns below quickly turned into screams of terror, an aural wave of horror flooding over us. The same happened between 2 and 230am, simultaneously wrenching and stopping our hearts. Close to 3am we were once again roused from our waking dreams, this time by the calls of the club's guardians. A captain from a Pakistani UN contingent had arrived after hearing that there was a large open space that could be used as a helipad, which happened to be the location of our little refugee camp. The UN wanted to use the site to evac their injured soldiers, who were now being pulled from wreckage around the city. I don't remember what prompted him to say this, but at some point the captain said in accented English, 'I don't know if you know, but the Haiti has collap-sed.' I didn't know what this meant -- had the government collapsed? was the whole country gone? -- but it felt as if the air had left my body.

A group of armed UN soldiers arrived soon after to secure the perimeter, we were told that helicopters would start arriving in one to three hours and we laid down, truly and finally exhausted to sleep as much as we could before that. I remember thinking as I drifted off that I was afraid of what we would see when the sun rose. Although we could hear everyone below and see the twinkling lights of cooking fires across the city, we could not really see what was awaiting us, what had happened to our city before it was plunged into the longest night of our lives.


I'm sorry; I had planned to write it all today, but I think I will need a couple more days.

For Stephane's family reading this, know that he and most of his mother's family are safely outside of Port-au-Prince right now, staying for the moment at a mission near Kaliko Beach. I spoke to him twice today on the phone and he sounds in good spirits, though he may be making an effort to fool me a bit. He was able to go back to PAP yesterday and retrieve some food from his agency's warehouse, which they used to conduct a small distribution, I believe in Carrefour. He would not have been able to do this comfortably had I been there, so I am trying to fool myself into thinking that it is good I am in the US. I am very sorry that I do not have any information on anyone that you asked about, I wish I could give you some news.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, they are so badly needed. I know a number of you are not religious, but I hope you can appreciate the comfort and strength in the Bible verse below that my friend Christy sent to me. She said that she came home from working a long shift at the hospital and wanted to pray, but was very tired, so she was flipping through the book of Isaiah and found this verse, which she has prayed every night since:
Isaiah 43
The Redeemer of Israel
1But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob,
And he who formed you, O Israel:

'Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name;
You are Mine.
2When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,
Nor shall the flame scorch you.
3For I am the Lord your God,

The Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I gave Egypt for your ransom,
Ethiopia and Sheba in your place....