V.I. residents with connections to Haiti were looking for word Wednesday on loved ones and friends following Tuesday’s devastating 7.3 earthquake centered near Port-au-Prince.
With telephone contact in Haiti extremely limited (many numbers there are likely to indicate line-trouble signals), many people are turning to the Internet for communication.
While there are official channels in Haiti for getting relief to people there, unofficial networks are providing information while communication is limited.
“I have been in shock since last night,” said Haitian native Hans Oriol, who now lives on St. Thomas.
“I received word at 3 a.m. on Wednesday that my immediate family (who live in a suburb of Port-au-Prince) were all OK, and that their home was OK." However, Oriol said the family, like many others, had taken the precaution of sleeping outside in the yard. “Basically everyone in Port-au-Prince is in the streets right now; they are still receiving aftershocks,” he said.
Oriol said that information on family members is being conveyed by whoever could get a call in to Haiti, and they, in turn, would pass on any information to others.
“It’s a network of friends and relatives,” Oriol said. “Anytime somebody gets a piece of news they pass it on to contacts through email, Facebook and Twitter.”
Oriol said his sister in Haiti told him that she saw a lot of devastation. The earthquake hit when people were getting ready to leave work (5:53 p.m.), but she didn’t make it home until midnight due to blocked roads, people in the streets and fires that couldn’t be immediately extinguished.
“It’s my understanding that some service stations and some major hotels are heavily damaged,” Oriol said. “So it was not easy for her to get from work to home, plus there is no electricity right now, and communication is cut off basically.”
The ad hoc information network came through with a message via Brazil this morning with sad news. “My wife’s best friend’s father died,” Oriol said. “He didn’t make it out of his house.”
On Wednesday Oriol was trying to locate his uncle for one of his cousins.
The Source was flooded Wednesday with a variety of emails on the situation in Haiti, including a forwarded email from the U.S. embassy in Haiti assuring a V.I. resident that his wife was safe and sound at the embassy.
Attorney Daryl Dodson’s wife Marjorie Roberts and their daughter Marjorie Dodson had joined Roberts’ sister, Laura Wright, and niece, Martha, for a trip with “Voluntour Haiti.”
Attorney Dodson exchanged e-mails with his wife early Thursday morning for the first time since all communication stopped an hour after the quake.
Dodson wrote the following in an e-mail to friends:
“She reported that, along with about 100 other U.S. citizens, she is sleeping outside under the palm trees on a blanket in ‘KOA Port-au-Prince’ aka the U.S. Embassy compound. Marjorie has been busy dressing wounds, helping people fill out forms, and taking care of kids.
“On the afternoon of the quake, they left their passports, wallets and cell phones in the manager’s safe at the orphanage where they were staying, and went out with only some cash for what they thought would be a short shopping trip. Their van driver took them straight to the U.S. Embassy after the quake, which took five hours. Their group was the first to arrive, Jorie said. They have heard that the top three floors of the orphanage have pancaked (although their rooms were on the ground floor which may be intact), and have not tried to go back to look for their stuff.
The U.S. State Department has set up a toll-free telephone number to help U.S. citizens locate missing family members. That embassy number is 888-407-4747.
