After earthquake, anguish mounting
South Florida’s Haitians worry for families, loved ones back home
The tragic scene in Haiti — the children sleeping in the streets, the families fleeing crumbled homes — brings back dreadful memories for Lesly Clervil in Pembroke Pines.
These are his relatives seeking shelter from their ruined homes after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Saturday, followed by the winds and rains of Tropical Storm Grace.
For Clervil, it’s a grisly reminder of the 2010 earthquake that killed his mother, two aunts, two nieces and a nephew. Their bodies were trapped beneath the rubble of their home for two weeks. Clervil and his brother paid $200 per body to men who were willing to dig through the crumbled concrete and retrieve them.
“I had to bury them with my own hands along with my brother,” he remembered Monday. “That’s something that stays with me.”
The latest quake, centered about 80 miles west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, Clervil’s previous home, killed at least 1,419 people and displaced thousands from destroyed or damaged structures. Some 6,000 were injured.
Clervil has family members sleeping in a place covered by plastic because they fear their cracked homes could topple in aftershocks, he said.
It is unthinkable to him that such devastation has struck again. To defend themselves against hurricanes, many Haitians have
built homes out of concrete, but that’s what kills them when earthquakes bring their homes down on top of them, he said
“You ask yourself, how much more can this country take?” he said. “With coronavirus, gang violence, with kidnappings, earthquakes and now hurricanes. It’s hard really to figure out how it is possible for somebody to live in Haiti.”
Clervil’s anguish is evident throughout the large Haitian community in South Florida. The region’s 300,000 people of Haitian descent represent the largest concentration in the U.S.
The quake nearly razed some towns and triggered landslides that hampered rescue efforts in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti already was struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, gang violence, worsening poverty and the political uncertainty after the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
Clervil is the senior project manager at Food for the Poor, where he has worked for 13 years since moving to the United States when he was 35. The Christian ministry provides aid, including food, housing, health care, education, fresh water and emergency relief to 17 countries throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.
For Clervil, his work is personal because “Haiti is home,” he said. And more often than not, aid is not truly delivered to those who need it the most because of gang interference or bad actors who pocket monetary aid for their own benefit, he said.
Clervil is able to make sure the resources are going to those who need it because the organization is there on the ground, he said.
Rough terrain or road blockages present another challenge, he said. That’s what’s happening with Ronald Lovinsky’s family in the town of Lazil, about 72 miles west of Port-au-Prince. The hospital and most businesses were reduced to rubble, he said.
“Most of the help is going to Les Cayes, Jeremie, the cities. Nothing goes to the towns, the countrymen,” he said. “We don’t see anything most of the time because of the mountain, and it’s difficult to get to them.”
What’s even more frustrating is when organizations use the aid for their own profit, he said.
Lovinsky, who lives in Boynton Beach, said he’ll try to fly into Haiti with supplies for his family and their neighbors sometime next week.
“Right now people are living in the street. They don’t have a roof over their head or clean water,” he said. “They really need medical help, somebody to send tents, medical supplies, doctors, nurses.”
The Rev. Reginald Jean-Marie, pastor of the Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church in Miami, said his contacts in Haiti are asking for medicine, flashlights, batteries, backpacks and generators. His parish is the largest Haitian Catholic community in South Florida, he said.
Catholic Charities is accepting financial donations only, because it’s too challenging to ship clothing and food quickly.