Eyewitness: Boston man evacuated from earthquake zone

January 19, 2010 by Elizabeth St. Victor, Contributing Reporter

Escape from Port-au-Prince: Patrick Jean Louis was among the Americans who were evacuated from Haiti aboard a U.S. military cargo plane on Saturday.On Tuesday January 12, Patrick Jean-Louis arrived in Haiti for the first time in seven years. Besides visiting family, Jean-Louis — who works at Roxbury Community College —had heard that Haiti’s economic situation “was moving in the right direction, so [he] went to see that.”
On the afternoon of his arrival, the 7.0 earthquake struck the two-floor building in Belleville where he, his uncle, and cousin were visiting. Jean-Louis asked his uncle, “What is that? It felt as though it was coming towards us.” His uncle replied that it was an earthquake.
Jean-Louis ran down from the second floor and out the door.
“It wasn’t easy getting out the house – the stairs were shaking.”
There were smaller, nearby homes that collapsed but Jean Louis reports that the larger buildings in the area, including the one he’d quickly left, were intact.
“Twenty-four hours afterwards, there was a shortage of food and we decided to go to Gressier – that’s where my grandmother lives. There was no way to communicate so we decided to go to Gressier to let her know that we were okay.” Jean-Louis took the Delmas route, travelling through Port-au-Prince. It was then he encountered the full breadth of mayhem.
“That’s when we saw the people, the dead people. That was really something,” he somberly remarked.
Damage in Gressier: Patrick Jean Louis shares this image he brought home from Haiti on Saturday.Gressier is one of Haiti’s southern towns located near the earthquake’s epicenter. When Jean-Louis and his family arrived at Gressier, however, they found no one there. Many of the residents had moved to the mountains for fear of remaining near unstable structures or for fear of an oncoming tsunami. Jean-Louis joined his family.
“We ended up staying in the mountains. We spent from Wednesday to Friday night there. Of course it was challenging, they were not prepared for us. It was not safe…but that was the way it had to be.”
Through cell phone communication with a brother in the United States, Jean-Louis understood that flights were boarding from Haiti to Miami for American civilians. He traveled from Gressier to the airport on Saturday morning and left the country on a cargo plane filled with other U.S. citizens. He is now staying with family in Miami before returning to Boston.
Since then, communication with his family in Gressier has been sporadic – he waits for phone calls updating him as to their whereabouts, their safety, and their needs.
Jean Louis promised the citizens of Gressier, now living in makeshift shelters on the district’s mountainside, he would help raise funds for basic needs like tents, medical supplies, and water. The Community for the Advancement of Gressier, a 15-year-old organization based in Boston, has shifted its attentions to these grave challenges of survival.
Echoing other survivors’ astonishment, Jean-Louis said, “I never thought that there would be such a difficult, tough time in Haiti.
"I know they will receive the help late in Gressier. I told them I will bring awareness that they are there and they need help."