Before and After January 12
For every Haitian, there’s a before January 12, and an after January 12.
On that day in 2010, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale was recorded just west of our capital, Port-au-Prince. Striking the island's most densely populated area, it killed hundreds of thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands more. Entire neighborhoods: homes, small businesses, schools, all destroyed. Here in Port-au-Prince, 1.5 million people were left homeless.
I am sure you followed our tragedy on television, on the radio, and in the newspapers. But not many people outside Haiti have heard personally and directly from the survivors.
Before January 12, I had just finished my classical studies. I was starting to teach French and Haitian Creole in a few schools in Port-au-Prince, substituting for my parents, both teachers at a school in Cité Soleil, Haiti's largest and most infamous slum.
The day of the earthquake, I was standing in for my mother in one of her French classes when the ground began to shake. It was 4:53pm when we felt the first tremors. They resembled earthquakes we had felt before, but the intensity was different – and increasing rapidly. The noise in the distance became a wave of sound. I tried to get up, tried to get out of the room with my students, but it was as if an invisible force had pinned me to my chair. The wall started to crack, like a canvas being torn apart. In moments, part of the school collapsed, with so many students inside. Some died, and many more were injured.
Earthquake damage in Port-au-Prince.
I could have lost both my parents that day. But they were safe outside. My father was just off the school grounds, sitting in a chair, waiting for my mother to arrive. When the shaking hit, he had the reflex to roll on the ground, away from the building, until he was clear of the debris in the street. When I made it outside, I saw that almost everyone had the same reflex, as spontaneous as it was strange: to go out into the street. Usually, when there's heavy rain, strong winds, or gunfire, it's exactly the opposite: we go inside.
People were shaking, crying, screaming, calling out to the Lord at every aftershock. We'd never experienced anything like it. There was no explanation at school. In our momentary ignorance, we thought the phenomenon was limited to the neighborhood we were in. We didn't realize the extent of the tragedy until we were back out on a main road, trying to walk home.
The gutters were bloody, and deep beneath the piles of rubble we could hear people trapped, calling for help. But there was nothing we could do, three teachers with no tools or equipment. At one point, I started counting the piles of bodies that people were carefully arranging along the roadside, covering them with a sheet or cloth. That night, we all slept under the stars. Our house was practically destroyed.
Aftershocks
The next morning, the smell of death was overpowering. Bodies were swelling and rotting. I can still remember watching the arrival of the first trucks from the Dominican Republic, coming to transport the corpses to mass graves, watching the bulldozers push the bodies away.
In the immediate aftermath that morning, everyone was consumed with trying to figure out where their loved ones might be. It had to do with the time of the earthquake. Between 3 and 4pm, you probably know exactly where your loved ones are – but not between 4:30 and 5pm. At 4:53pm in Port-au-Prince, everybody is moving. Students are out of school, but often still hanging around school grounds. Others are doing their last shopping before heading home from work, and rush hour traffic jams are in full swing. It's an hour of total social breakdown and scattering, and for those who had a mother on her way home from work, a son supposed to be returning from school, a brother who went to pick up rice from the store, the anxiety was total.
The Helpers and The Future
But in time, people started to get out and organize themselves, working to seal up their homes and fix what could be fixed. A collective survival instinct took over, and there was unwavering solidarity between us all. People went out to search for help, to bring food back, to bring this city back alive. Without them, without the helpers, Port-au-Prince would have remained as dead as it was that Wednesday morning.
I lost an unimaginable number of friends and family in that earthquake. Even today, 14 years later, I wonder at why and how I escaped unscathed, unlike so many others.
Every year, the Haitian government organizes annual commemorations of the earthquake, which are particularly painful. I thought that bearing witness to what happened was a good thing – that it was a duty to remember, and that it was also a good idea to talk about it. I hoped it might perhaps raise the awareness of the Haitian authorities so that they could put new structures, crisis response policies, and building standards in place.
But today, the Republic of Haiti is still struggling to recover from the consequences of the devastating earthquake of Tuesday in January 14 years ago. Construction without regard for earthquake safety standards has proliferated again, particularly in working-class neighborhoods – and it happens in full view of the state authorities, who are taking no steps to prevent these risky practices. The aid from the rest of the world has dried up, leaving a country without infrastructure to build its own future. The solidarity we felt in the aftermath of the disaster has diminished. I hope, but still I wonder whether Haiti will ever rise from its ashes.
A Note from Heartline
On that 12th of January, Heartline was on the ground and in action: turning the Maternity Center into a triage and serving as many families as possible in as many ways as possible, during a tragic and unpredictable period in Haitian history. Today, 14 years later, we’re still there, with an expanded operation and more team members, living our mission to invest in Haitian families. Join us and send a message of hope to Haitian families as we begin a new year and remember what came before.
About the Author
Aljany Narcius
Haitian journalist Aljany Narcius is currently pursuing a Master 2 in Media Management, online from France’s University of Lille. With ten years of experience in the fields of journalism and communication, Aljany is a linguist who uses the Creole language as her weapon in the fight against social inequalities, exploitation, and all kinds of violence.
