Earthquake
Trip Start
Sep 08, 2009
1
6
Trip End
Sep 08, 2010
Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti
Saturday, February 6, 2010
I was standing on the last couple of steps of our stairwell with a colleague, and I went rushing up a few steps to peak outside to see if the mountain was tumbling down. My colleague pulled me back down and then pushed me toward another colleague who grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the exit. We ran in a crouch, hesitating as we continuously glanced at the walls around us. As we neared the sliding glass doors, I saw trees shaking violently outside and wondered if it could possibly be wind that could cause the building to dance just so. I still couldn't fathom that it was really an earthquake.
Then, we were outside, and just as suddenly, the shaking stopped, and the earth was still. Other colleagues were outside. We all looked at each other incredulously. "A tremblement de terre," they said, shaking their heads and laughing. The colleague who was with me in the stairwell explained that a fault line cut across Haiti, so yes, Suzy, earthquakes were possible.
None of us realized the magnitude of the damage, as nothing around us fell. None of us had experienced a real earthquake before so had nothing against which to measure the experience. We hung around the office a bit, joking and laughing, reluctant to leave. I think we somehow sensed that it might be the last time we would be able to cling to our comfortable and secure lives. As soon as we would exit our office gate, life as we knew it in Port-au-Prince would change.
My colleagues began to leave. One had received a phone call about a collapsed building, so they all wanted to go check on their homes. I was afraid that my apartment might be damaged because of its hillside location, and I didn't want to go home alone. I had planned to go to the gym and went upstairs to change. I thought maybe I would be able to find my friend Molly there, and we could go together to my house. Only after I drove outside the office gate and down the streets of Petionville, where people ran, cried, and carried the injured, did I begin to comprehend that the shaking might have been a really big deal. Everything felt eery and surreal. I drove past the gym anyway, in a daze, and then headed back up the hill toward home.
On the road that winded upwards toward my home, I passed a car that had turned over. I was still reluctant to see the discover the status of my apartment all alone, so I stopped at the apartment complex of some friends who work for USAID. Only two of the four friends were at home, the other two having left for Washington a few days earlier for a training. They still had electricity (from a generator) and satellite internet. They were cleaning up wine and glass from broken bottles. They had an American Embassy radio that was to be used during emergencies.
As we sat in front of my friend's computer looking at images and listened to the radio, which blurted out names of survivors and news of collapsed buildings and rescue efforts, my heart pounded harder and faster. We jumped under the table with each violent aftershock.
In around 30 or 40 seconds, the earth flattened buildings, homes, people. Count it out to yourself, and imagine. How long does it take for one manmade bomb to drop and level a building? Yet, in Port-au-Prince, it was as though the earth itself detonated thousands of bombs. The magnitude of that power that can cause such devestation so quickly is somehow still able to inspire at the same time a perverse sense of Awe. Mother earth clearly knows that no matter what man might do to try to control her, steal from her, alter her...with one 30-second shift of her body, she can tumble all our efforts to master her.
Still, each tremble of the earth seeps deeper into the cells of every earthquake survivor, spreading like a virus. What is the cure for a fear that only magnifies with each aftershock, each collapsed building seen, each rotting body smelled? What is the cure for this conscious quaking at the foot of the fault line?
