By Rachel Pratt and Garry Pierre-Pierre
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 21 2010 (IPS)

Marjorie Louis and her two small children are sleeping in the street. Their home is in complete ruins. And Louis has no way to let her mother in Les Cayes know that she survived the deadliest natural disaster to hit this country.

Busloads of people leave Port-au-Prince after a powerful earthquake caused countless fatalities and left the city virtually inoperable. Credit: UN Photo/Marco Dormino

“I lost everything and don’t know what to do,” Louis said, while waiting at a bus depot, en route to Les Cayes. “I have no place to live. My daughter has heart problems and I want to make sure she continues to get care. I don’t know when I will return here. But as soon as it gets better [I will].”

Louis and her children were part of an exodus out of the ravaged capital city that began as early as Jan. 13, one day after the 7.0 magnitude quake struck. As the death toll mounts every day, government officials are urging people to evacuate the city so that rescue workers can have unfettered access to those still buried alive.

They also want to remove the bodies of the dead to minimise the public health crisis that is sure to follow this catastrophe.

The survivors need little urging. Millions are seeking refuge from the horror and destruction engulfing Port-au-Prince. The entire city smells of rotting corpses and the formaldehyde – sprayed to neutralise the stench – gives it the aura of a giant funeral parlor.

Throughout the week, U.S. and Canadian citizens have been airlifted out of the city on chartered flights. People with residency in those countries have lined up outside the airport to be evacuated. Diplomats of various nations have allowed children of Haitian parents born in their respective countries to be accompanied to the embassies so they can be reunited with their parents abroad.

Jean Rousseau, a metal worker, was heading to Les Cayes as well, where an uncertain future awaits him. Like so many others, he talked of returning to the city that gave him a means of feeding his family.

“I have no electricity to keep working,” Rousseau said. “There is nothing. Plus I have to let my mother know I’m okay.”

“I hope that things will be fixed very soon so I can get back to work in Port-au-Prince,” he said.

At the U.S. Embassy

In the oppressive heat, more than 400 Haitians lined up outside of the United States Embassy for hours, hoping the Americans would rescue them, that America would be the hero.

U.S. officials told them to show their passport and get on the line. The Haitians with no prior authorisation to enter the U.S. wondered: “How long will this take? Can they really help me get out of the country? Where will I be dropped off?”

“We love our country, we saw it getting better,” said Joanne Gautierre, who owned a beverage warehouse. “[The year] 2009 showed promise and hope. But now after this happened I am really afraid of an epidemic. All of these dead bodies around us and not enough people to move them out. We don’t want to get sick and die.”

“Now I have nothing and I have to get my children out of Haiti,” Gautierre said. “As long as I am out of the country we will manage. I have my brother in law who lives in New York.”

Heading to Canada

Hundreds more people gathered outside the gates of the Canadian Embassy on Delmas, hoping to be put on a flight to Montreal. Many of them lost their passports and prayed that somehow they would be allowed to leave.

Like most people interviewed, many said that while they would like to leave Haiti, ultimately they want to return to their homeland.

“We don’t have a choice,” said one young man who did not want to give his name. “But if things get better, we want to come back. This is our home.”

At the Bus Stops

Haitian government officials, under pressure to clear the city, provided buses for free to people who want to join their families in the provinces. Blue and white school buses are stationed throughout the city and people scramble to obtain a seat.

Others who cannot wait for the free buses head to stations with buses bound to the provinces.

“Everybody is worried about me ” said Marie Petit-Homme, bound for Cap-Haitien. “I’m fine, but we lost everything.”

Petit-Homme, a mother of three, said the house collapsed just before she walked in with her children from school. It was 4:53 PM. She watched in horror as their home crumbled, turned away with her children, and has not returned to her Carrefour Feuilles neighbourhood since.

“It’s too much, so many people dead,” Petit-Homme said, clutching the youngest of her three children. “Oh, what has Haiti done to deserve this?”

*Special to IPS from The Haitian Times.

Excerpt:

By Rachel Pratt and Garry Pierre-Pierre
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 18 2010 (IPS)

Marjorie Louis was sitting in her kitchen eating dinner when she felt the house shaking, but she didn’t get up.

With many of the city's structures left in ruins, including the presidential palace (background), residents pitch tents for temporary shelter. Credit: UN Photo/Marco Dormino

“I didn’t think it wasn’t going to be serious… and was waiting for it to stop. But I noticed it wasn’t stopping and finally tried to get up off the table but just couldn’t get up,” said Louis, a banker who lives in Delmas. “I looked outside the window and saw a large cloud of dust and started to hear my children screaming.”

Louis is considered among the lucky, having survived an earthquake that killed tens of thousands of her fellow Haitians. A few days after the seismic tremors, stories of survival, death and destruction continue to engulf this mountainous Caribbean nation of roughly nine million people.

Her story is similar to those of millions of others after Haiti’s capital was hit with the 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday. Thousands of people were killed and caught under the rubble for the same reason – they didn’t believe this was “the one” and were completely caught off guard.

Haitians explained how mini-earthquakes have become the norm in recent years. But they never imagined that this catastrophe would happen in their lifetimes.

“Now I know that not leaving the house and making my family leave was a mistake. I feel so empty and helpless,” Louis said. Six others in the house stayed as well. Fortunately, they eventually made it out alive.

According to a Haitian doctor, “There is a five-second rule. If you count to five and it keeps shaking, that’s when it’s serious.”

Unfortunately, this one lasted longer than five seconds. But by the time a person finished counting, it was too late to escape.

Lyvee Memon had just arrived home from a funeral at Sacred Heart Church, a historic landmark that was later completely destroyed. She was in her living room when the tremors began. She couldn’t believe it was the real thing and planned to wait for it to stop – until the walls fell all around her. She survived and was pinned under the rubble.

“I was able to find a small, little hole that only a child could fit through, to make it out,” Memon said days later.

Herold Guillaume was driving along Nazon Road when his green Toyota sedan began bouncing. He first thought that another driver had hit his car. He looked up to see buildings and debris falling all around him. The sky was quickly blotted out by a powdery dust.

“I left the car and walked home, all the while thinking about my father who was home alone,” Guillaume said.

Emmanuel Jean was on the top floor of his three-storey home and his father was in the study on the first floor. The robust building crumbled like matchsticks and Jean said he barely escaped.

“I ran downstairs and looked for my father and got him out,” said Jean, an electrical engineer. Since then, Jean has been living in his backyard while making arrangements to join his mother and sisters, who live in Long Island.

“I’m still in shock,” he said. “I never expected this would come. Now we have to start our lives from nothing. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

*Special to IPS from The Haitian Times.

Excerpt: