Sphere NYC Haitians Reel From News of Earthquake

NYC

NEW YORK (Jan. 13) – They say not knowing is the worst part. For New York City's Haitian population, many of whom still cannot get in touch with relatives in Haiti, the stress is overwhelming.

At the Bedford Haitian Community Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, this morning, employees were on the phone trying to get through to relatives with no success. "It is stressful," said Maidjine Bataille, a 27-year-old native of Haiti who has a great-grandmother, grandmother, half sister, cousin, uncle and aunt still living there. "It's like you don't know what's going on, who's alive, who's dead."

Throughout the city's Haitian community the message was the same. Few people had been able to contact family in Port-au-Prince, and as images of devastation poured through television screens, fear and anxiety grew.

"Everybody's worried because we don't know, deeply, we don't know what the damage is," said Joseph Dormeus, executive director of the Bedford center. "Physically we see the damage on the house, on the building, but we don't know how many people that are dead."

Dormeus said the community center was open late Tuesday night as people gathered to try to call family. This morning people came again, some in tears, trying in vain to get news of their family members. By late morning the seven people who remained, mostly employees, watched scenes of destruction on the news and on YouTube.

"We have not been able to digest what's going on because the news has been scattered," said Samuel Barthelemy, who has lived in the United States for 40 years. "I hardly got any sleep because my younger son is in Haiti and I couldn't get any news."

Barthelemy, 62, works at the Haitian Centers Council in Flatbush. He was one of the few who finally did make contact with family when he received an e-mail this morning saying his 13-year-old son was safe.

His co-worker, Dr. Marie Pierre-Louis, was another one of the rare lucky ones. She had been in Haiti for the holidays and got back to New York on Sunday. She managed to speak with her 93-year-old father, who lives alone in Port-au-Prince, and her sister right after the earthquake Tuesday evening.

The news they had could have been much worse. Her brother-in-law had hurt a few fingers and had a gash in his head. She had just enough time to tell them where she had left some gauze before they were cut off.

"I try all of them and keep trying and keep trying," Pierre-Louis said. But since last night, she has not had any news.

Her brother has fared far worse. His wife works in a government ministry in Port-au-Prince and he has not heard any news from her. Pierre-Louis said he is "going nuts."

Pierre-Louis also has a blind uncle she has no news of, and her son can't get in touch with his girlfriend.

Stories just like these are the norm today. And though many woke up and went to work this morning, disbelief and shock have consumed many of New York's Haitians, who are used to dealing with hurricanes on their island nation, but rarely earthquakes.

Haitian President René Préval told reporters today that the destruction from the 7.0-magnitude quake was "unimaginable" and that he was now homeless himself. Early unofficial estimates place the death toll in the thousands.

Dormeus of the Bedford center said he hoped the aftershocks would stop. "A continuation, the way I see it, will be the end of Port-au-Prince," he said, adding that the devastation there will damage the rest of the country, which relies heavily on the capital.

The idea that Port-au-Prince will never be the same added to the shock and disbelief in New York.

"It will never be the way it was when I grew up," Pierre-Louis said. "Port-au-Prince as we know it won't exist anymore."