By Bill Quigley
Smoke and flames rose from the sidewalk. A white man took pictures. Slowing down, my breath left me. The fire was a corpse. Leg bones sticking out of the flames.
Port au Prince police headquarters is gone, already bulldozed. A nearby college is pancaked. Government buildings are destroyed. Stores fallen down. Tens of thousands of buildings destroyed. Hundreds of thousands homeless. Giant piles of concrete, rebar, metal pipes, plastic pipes, doors and wires.
Corpses are still inside many of the mountains of rubble. No estimates of how many thousands of people are dead inside. Electrical poles bend over streets, held up by braids of thick black wires. On some side streets the wires are still down in the street.
Buildings take unimaginable shapes. Some are half up while the other side slopes to the ground. Some like collapsed cakes. Others smashed like children’s toys.
Everywhere are sheet shelters. In parks, soccer fields, in the parking lot of the tv station, tens of thousands literally in the streets and on sidewalks. Thousands of people standing in the hot sun waiting their turn. Outside the hospital, clinics, money transfer companies, immigration offices, and the very few places offering water or food.
Troops and heavy machinery are only seen in the center of the city.
After days in port Au prince I have seen only one fight – two teens fighting on a streetcorner over a young woman. No riots. No machetes.
Hope is found in the people of
Everyone needs tents and food and medical care and water. But when you talk to them, most will lead you to the ailing great grandma or the malnourished child.
I asked Lavarice Gaudin, who helps the St. Clares community feed thousands each day through their What If Foundation, "What should outsiders do?" Lavarice said "Help the most poor first. Some who labored their whole lives to make a one bedroom home will likely never have a home again.
International volunteers who work hand in hand with Haitians are welcomed. Others not so much. Lavarice saw the associated press story that reported only one penny of every
"We hope this will help us develop strong leadership that listens and responds to the people," he says. "No matter what, we will never give up. Haitians are strong hopeful people. We will rebuild."
This article originally appeared on the blog of the Louisiana Justice Institute.
Bill Quigley is Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights and a long-time