Jersey City resident, caught in Haiti when the earthquake hit, tried to help: "People are dying every day."

Monday, February 15, 2010
By AMY SARA CLARK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

When the earthquake in Haiti hit, Stanley Gerve grabbed onto the pickup truck parked in the courtyard of his family's home, and held on as if his life depended on it.

"It you didn't grab anything you were going to fall down," he said during an interview at The Jersey Journal. "When you're on a boat and the waves are angry - that's exactly what it felt like."

The 36-year-old truck driver, who grew up in Haiti and now lives in Jersey City Heights, had come to Port-au-Prince with his 66-year-old father, Urbain Gerve, on Dec. 29 to spend a few weeks with his brother and sister. When the earth began to shake, Gerve was playing dominos with his father and some friends.

After the shaking stopped, Gerve took stock. The family home was badly damaged, but everyone in the group was OK except 17-year-old Valerie, a family friend with heart problems, who was having trouble breathing. He and his brother grabbed a jeep to find help for Valerie.

The road was covered with injured people. He took five more people into the jeep and drove to a clinic. "There was a huge crowd. Everybody was on the ground (outside) and there was nothing they could do. So many people and not enough medicine," Gerve said.

They tried two other hospitals, but the situation was the same. Gerve's brother finally got some inhalers for Valerie and brought her back to the family courtyard, where she recovered.

The second hospital was the least crowded, and Gerve spent the rest of the night ferrying the injured to it. "You don't know if they got treatment or not," he said.

The next day, Gerve moved corpses off the roads. Then he ran into a friend, Ricardo Jean-Michel, who was in Haiti working at a start-up magazine entitled Cool.

The pair found a place to buy bread - at about five times the regular price - and distributed it to a group camped out near a gas station.

With so many hungry people and limited resources, Gerve decided to concentrate on helping this one group as best he could. His group of 20 quickly grew. He cut it off at 70.

See CNN Video :
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/america ... l.hotel/index.html?hpt=C1

Haiti quake levels hotel, crushes dream
From Gwenn Mangine, Special to CNN
January 17, 2010 9:04 p.m. EST

NEW: Relative learns couple survived when she saw their picture on CNN.com

Joachin "Clark" Jean-Gilles spent life savings building hotel worth $2 million

Jean-Gilles and wife slept in car after quake destroyed hotel
30-room hotel took six years to build; Jean-Gilles without insurance or income to rebuild

Jacmel, Haiti (CNN) -- Tuesday morning, Joachin "Clark" Jean-Gilles was a millionaire. Tuesday night, he was sleeping in his car.

Jean-Gilles was owner of the Peace of Mind Hotel in Jacmel, Haiti, a three-story, 30-room hideaway in a quiet tropical valley on Haiti's southern coast, 25 miles from the bustle of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Jean-Gilles and his wife, Marie, lived in an apartment on the property, close enough to watch carefully over the guest rooms, conference rooms, boutique and restaurant, close enough that they pledged to know the first name of every guest.

After the 7.0-earthquake hit, they slept in their aging Isuzu, parked in the hotel driveway.

Jean-Gilles figured a split second was the difference between life and death when the temblor struck. He was working in a ground-floor conference room and first heard, then felt the quake. He asked his electrician, Roberne St. Louis, who was working nearby, what was happening.
"Get out. Now. Get out. Now," St. Louis said.

Jean-Gilles cleared the collapsing structure by a mere second, he estimated.

His wife, who was working in the couple's apartment on the second floor, wasn't able to get clear. People nearby heard her screams after the shaking stopped and removed the cinder blocks entrapping her by hand. She was shaken and scratched, but walked away from the wreckage.

"I am alive. God is good," she repeated over and over on Saturday.

The Peace of Mind Hotel was a dream come true for Jean-Gilles, 57, and Marie, 59. Born in Port-au-Prince, they moved to the United States shortly after meeting 34 years ago. Together, they owned a beauty supply store in Jersey City, New Jersey, and invested in real estate. In 2003, they cashed out their U.S. investments, returned to Haiti and began building the Peace of Mind Hotel, looking to make a future for themselves and the people of their homeland.
"In a country that is so poor, we knew we could do well. We could help people by creating jobs," Jean-Gilles said.

They did just that. The Peace of Mind, which they valued at about $2 million, was theirs free and clear. They employed 40 people during the construction and had 25 on staff when the quake struck.

One employee, who is also a relative, was killed in the collapse. Her body was retrieved on Saturday. One other body remained in the rubble of the Peace of Mind, that of an American working in Haiti who'd stopped in for a few drinks and to use the Internet. Heavy machinery pulled away chunks of debris and the smell said searchers were close to finding that body, too.

The couple's relatives in the United States didn't learn of their survival until this story was published on CNN.com. A relative saw the couple's picture on CNN.com's homepage and told others, said the couple's daughter-in-law, Karen Jean-Gilles of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

She said she and other relatives were going crazy with worry until they saw the picture. The relatives in the United States still haven't been able to reach the couple, but Karen Jean-Gilles' husband plans to go to Haiti and find them as soon as commercial flights resume, she said.

"I was crying. I was just so happy that they are OK," Karen Jean-Gilles said Sunday evening. "

As for the hotel, while business wasn't overwhelming during its first year, hope was high for February, when the annual carnival celebration brings thousands of people to Jacmel.
Business in Haiti relies a lot on hope. There is no insurance for small-business men like himself, Jean-Gilles said. And he'd yet to find international insurance since he opened the hotel last February. He'd worked six years on it and invested a lifetime of savings.

Saturday, Jean-Gilles said he wanted to rebuild, but was at a loss on how he could make that happen.
"We don't have a source of revenue. This hotel was the source of our revenue. All we've worked for our whole life. And it's gone," he said.

Still, he tossed around options. An outbuilding that served as a kitchen survived. Maybe he could build around that. And there's a swimming pool that was just about complete. That was something to work with.

And there was the hope and faith that had let him live his dream, if only for a few short months.

"God is good. Remember, God is good," Jean-Gilles told a neighbor in the valley as he contemplated rebuilding. "This time it will be flat. I am not building up anymore."
Karen Jean-Gilles said her father-in-law and mother-in-law spent their life savings and did "everything they could possibly think of doing to get this hotel up and running." Clark Jean-Gilles looked at the hotel as "being the legacy to his grandchildren," she said.

"I'm just so happy that they are OK, but I'm sad about the hotel," Karen Jean-Gilles said. "We don't know what they're going to do now. My husband wants to get to Haiti to help them, but the airlines are closed. So, it's really complicated, but we're just thankful that they're alive."

CNN's Don Lemon and David Williams contributed to this report.

At the CNN site, people can search for missing persons or upload pictures of people they are looking for by filing an ireport
Link:
http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stori ... a?topicId=381628&start=12

Hey Jersey City!

I am the Manager at The Merchant at 279 Grove Street and on January 28th we are donating 25% of our sales for the night to the Haiti Relief effort.

Please come out and join us to contribute to this very important cause. We need everyone's help so please spread the word and bring your friends.

If you have any questions or want to make reservations you can reach me at 201.200.0202

Thanks so much for all your help!

Kelly

Very informative and sad article Br6dR. Thanks for posting.

Where Was the World When Haiti Really Needed It?

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The Huffington Post
January 14, 2010

The heartbreaking and pathetic scene I and a group of other American visitors witnessed at the small beach town in Northern Haiti still haunts me. We had no sooner arrived at the beach then a contingent of Haitian police and local officials frantically waved away a throng of the town's residents that had poured onto to the beach to hawk food, trinkets, carvings, and tattered clothing items, but mostly to beg. Their torn tee shirts, ragged shorts, and emaciated, hollow-eyed looks spoke of more than Haiti's legendary, world-leading poverty. It spoke of the sheer, utter desperation to get anything from those they regarded as rich foreign tourists.

The tormenting scene that I and thousands of other visitors have routinely witnessed during the past decade has become the national emblem of Haiti. Yet, it took a murderous earthquake, clips of bodies sprawled in the streets, a collapsed palace and shanties, torn streets, and the shocked expressions on children's faces for the US and legions of public agencies and private donors to leap over themselves to promise to send an armada of food, medical supplies, clothing, building materials, construction teams, security forces and cash to Haiti.

Why did it take a natural tragedy for this? Haiti's sorry history of American occupation, brutal dictatorial and military rule, the flood of refugees trying to escape the nation's destitution; the perennial food crises; the wave of devastating hurricanes that tore through the country one month in 2008; the US, Canada and France's meddling in the nation's internal politics and the grinding poverty is well known.

Haiti's corrupt, repressive military rulers and government officials get standard blame for the country's chronic poverty and bankruptcy. There's much truth to that. But Haiti is also a relentless victim of crushing and never ending debt servitude to the IMF and foreign banks, vicious labor exploitation, and the blind eye US aid policies that stunt Haiti's farm and manufacturing growth.

The nation's debt burden would sink virtually any developing nation. Haiti is compelled to shell out nearly $1 million a week to pay off its debt to the World Bank and the IMF; debt incurred by the Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier regimes and their successor military governments in the early 1990s propped up by the US. Half of the loans were given to the Duvaliers and the other dictatorships. They squandered the cash on presidential luxuries with barely a cent going to development programs for the poor.

In 2008, the World Bank President Robert Zoellick, in reaction to massive outcry from government officials and Haitian activist groups, publicly pledged to forgive part of the nation's the debt totaling a half billion dollars. The Bank reneged on the promise. The money could have bankrolled a vast expansion of healthcare, nutrition and feeding programs, supplies of clean water, and rebuilding the country's badly frayed infrastructure.

The United Nations has hardly been a benevolent force to aid the country's development and Democratic rule. The UN yearly shells out $600 million to maintain its 8000 peace keepers.
Yet when the hurricanes ravaged the country, the UN force did not dispatch amphibious units, build temporary bridges, or provide trucks or equipment to provide emergency help to Haitians in distress.

US AID has come under intense fire for turning a blind eye to corporations and contractors who ignore basic Haitian labor, human rights, minimum wage and environmental laws, shun service providers, and invest only a relative pittance of profit back into Haitian small businesses, manufacturing, and food production. This is a particular sore point given Haiti's near total reliance on foreign food imports has resulted in famine, near starvation, and food riots.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report that with proper investment in food production, the country is more than capable of feeding its 8.5 million population.

In 2008, a coalition of US and Haitian human rights groups flatly accused the US of aiding and abetting corruption in the country. It demanded that then President Bush and Congress determine which US corporations and Haitian officials pocketed and benefited from the more than $4 billion USAID and their sub-contractors spent from 1994 to 1998. They demanded to know who profited and enriched themselves from the over $8 billion dollars spent following the US engineered overthrow of democratically elected President Jean Aristide. The groups charged that the systematic looting of the country's treasury did not end with his ouster. Their demands fell on deaf ears.

A colossal earthquake brought the world to Haiti's doorstep. The questions, though, are why did it take that? And what will it take for the world to stick around after the rubble is cleared and help transform Haiti into the democratic, self-supporting nation it can be?

Jersey City Medical Center plans to send doctors, nurses to help Haiti

Thursday, January 14, 2010
By RON ZEITLINGER
DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR

The earthquake that rocked Haiti Tuesday cast a pall over the Jersey City Medical Center yesterday.

More than 200 of the hospital's approximately 3,000 employees are of Haitian descent, said hospital spokesman Mark Rabson.

"You can feel it in the hospital," said Elizabeth Corshu, an educator in the nurse education department who has cousins, aunts and uncles who live in or near Port-au-Prince, the capital.

"(Tuesday) was one of the worst days in the history of Haiti. All day you can see it on people's faces - the sadness," she said.

JCMC is planning to send a small team of doctors and nurses to Haiti "as soon as possible," Rabson said, adding that the hospital will hold a prayer service in English and Creole at the hospital tomorrow from noon to 12:45 and from 1 to 1:45 p.m.

Also, the Haitian Employees Association will collect monetary donations from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow and on Tuesday. The money collected will help offset the travel costs of the medical mission.

"We'd like to send a team of about five," Rabson said. "Maybe two doctors and three nurses or three doctors and two nurses. They would be there for a week or two. There is nothing definite yet, though."

The husband of one JCMC employee landed in Port-au-Prince just hours before the earthquake, and she has not yet heard from him.

"I'm very worried," Marie Jean, 62, a registered nurse, said of her husband, Mercidieu, 72. "He arrived at 1 p.m. and the earthquake hit at about 4:30 p.m. He went to visit family there.

"I have tried his cell phone. I get nothing," she said. "No contact from any family member over there. The only thing I know is from TV and I had to shut it off. It's too hard to watch. Hopefully my husband is still alive."

While most people have heard nothing from relatives, Corshu received a call from her cousin, Jean-Claude Filien, in Port-au-Prince Tuesday night, and the news was grim.

"He said it was mass devastation," Corshu said. "The streets opened up and the buildings were vacuumed into the streets."

Corshu's cousin was not hurt, but she said he had not heard from any other relatives there.

"I was working all day, so I didn't try to call much. But other people have been trying all day to get through. It's very depressing and saddening - the not knowing."
==============================

Jersey City community rallies to support earthquake victims in Haiti

By Melissa Hayes/The Jersey Journal
January 13, 2010, 9:51PM

The Rev. Lemaire Alerte, of the Haitian Evangelical Church, speaks to a Haitian radio station about earthquake relief efforts during a meeting in Jersey City tonight while Assemblyman Charles Mainor, D-Jersey City (left), Hudson County Freeholder Eliu Rivera, director of PACO, and Elda Pinchinat (right) of the Jersey City-based Haitian American Association look on.

Crammed into a small room, seated around a long table, about 50 community members from various backgrounds and religions gathered at the Haitian Evangelical Church in Jersey City tonight developing a plan to send relief to Haiti.
Many in attendance have relatives in Haiti they are still trying to contact in the country devastated by an earthquake last night.

?The good part is we?re here tonight together to try to do the best we can to help our brothers and sisters,? said Eliu Rivera, executive director of Puertorriquenos Associados for Community Organization and a county freeholder.
He said individuals seeking information about family members in Haiti can call the U.S. Department of State?s Operation Center at 1-888-407-4747.

The group brainstormed and named the Haitian Evangelical Church at 2030 Kennedy Blvd. a local hub to coordinate activity.

The church is accepting canned food, medical supplies and water. Organizers are also seeking boxes, markers and tape to package the donations. Individuals interested in volunteering can contact the church at (201) 332-6057.
Donations are also being accepted at D&J Institute Career Center Health Training School at 160 Ocean Avenue in Jersey City.

The Jersey City Hispanic Law Enforcement Association will handle shipping the items to Haiti. IMPACT, the African-American law enforcement association, is also coordinating donations.

Detective Frank Molina, president of the Hispanic Law Enforcement Association, also urged people interested in donating to text the word ?Haiti? to 90999 from their cell phones to donate $10 to the Red Cross.

?They need the people, the first responders to get there,? he said. ?In order to get there, they need money.?
Assemblyman Charles Mainor, D-Jersey City, a city police detective, said he will be challenging students in Jersey City schools to collect canned goods to send to Haiti and plans to throw a pizza party for the class that brings in the most donations.

Mainor said about 20 pastors will hold a prayer service at Greater Tabernacle Church at 2281 Kennedy Blvd. tomorrow at noon.

He?s also planning a blood drive next week.
Members of the Jersey City-based Haitian American Association asked for a place to offer counseling services to area residents who have family in Haiti.

?We?ve been in communication with the people and we are following the situation closely,? said Woody Dumornay, a spokesman for the Haitian American Association. ?It?s a calamity of gigantic proportions. We don?t know if we will recover from this.?

The association does not yet have an office, but Cityline Church at 1510 Kennedy Blvd. who has a psychologist on staff offered to provide counseling service to those in need. For information contact the church.

=============================

Jersey City family waits for word from relatives after Haiti earthquake

By The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk
January 13, 2010, 9:32AM

JERSEY CITY -- A first generation Haitian living in the city is frantically trying to contact her relatives who live in and around Port-au-Prince, Haiti and fearing the worst after the strongest earthquake on the island in more than 200 years, a report on FoxNews.com said.

Yamilee Bazille, 35, has not gotten through via e-mail, cell phone, or home numbers to relatives living in the country, including a sister of her father who lives just outside Port-au-Prince and a brother of her mother who lives inside the capital, the report said. She also has several cousins and friends living there as well.

Displaced people carry a wounded man out of the clinic as aftershocks occur , following a major earthquake on Jan. 13 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Dazed and injured Haitians sat on darkened streets pleading for help today and untold numbers were trapped in tons of rubble brought down by the tremors.

Destroyed communications made it impossible to tell the extent of destruction from Tuesday afternoon's 7.0-magnitude tremor ? or to estimate the number of dead lying among thousands of collapsed buildings in Haiti's capital of about 2 million people.

Bazile and her mother went to Haiti a year ago as part of a humanitarian mission that brought medical and dental care to rural parts of the country, the report said. She told Fox News she is relying on her faith and praying while keeping her hopes up to find relatives.

More than a dozen Warren County residents were on a mercy mission to Haiti when the earthquake occurred.
Frank Fowler, senior pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church in Hackettstown, left with a group of 15 men and women Saturday on the church?s annual journey to bring medical supplies and other personal health items to Grace?s Children Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

-The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Most in Hudson don't know if Haiti loved ones survived quake

Thursday, January 14, 2010
By AMY SARA CLARK and RON ZEITLINGER
JOURNAL STAFF WRITERS

"You don't know if your family is still alive," said Exileine Samedi, a 51-year-old social worker who lives in the Greenville section of Jersey City. "I've been waiting by the phone all night (for news)."

Marie Day, director of the D & J Institute Career Center, a medical training school on Ocean Avenue in Jersey City, said all avenues of communication with her relatives in Haiti have been shut down.

"None of us can get in touch with anyone. We've tried calling, texting, e-mail - nothing works at all," Day said.

The people who gathered at Day's center yesterday said they fear all the relief aid will go to the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. So they are planning to take medicine and other supplies to their hometowns - Arcahaie, Jeremie and Damien - as soon as the nation's airports reopen.

"I was crying all night," Day said. "When I look on the Internet all you see are people bleeding."

At St. Patrick/Assumption All Saints Roman Catholic Church on Bramhall Avenue in Jersey City, a church home for many Haitians, the phones were ringing yesterday morning.

"I'm in the same boat (as the parishioners)," said the Rev. Marc-Arthur Francois, a Haitian priest at St. Patrick's.

"I cannot try to fake or hide what's in my heart. In terms of finding words, sometimes the best thing to do is to listen to them and to be with them . Sometimes there are no words."

Meanwhile, at least one Jersey City resident received good news yesterday.

Joe Cross, 62, of Jersey City, learned yesterday afternoon that the hotel he owns in Jacmel, Haiti, Hotel Florita, is still standing and guests and employees were not harmed.

"It was built in 1888 and has withstood a lot of hurricanes," Cross said yesterday morning.

An interview with Cross was posted on NJ.com and yesterday afternoon, the Rev. Dave Smedley, who grew up in Jersey City, contacted Cross to pass along the good news about the hotel that he had heard from his seminary students in Jacmel.

Cross is planning to go to the hotel in person and has been able to secure a flight to Haiti for next Thursday.

St. Patrick/Assumption All Saints Church, at Bramhall and Ocean avenues, is holding a special service to pray for victims of the earthquake on Jan. 23 at 1 p.m.