Finding Courage Among Chaos in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jan. 23, 2010— -- On Tuesday night, Jan. 12, my children were just sitting down for dinner when I saw an ominous newswire on my Blackberry: "Major earthquake hits Haiti."

I did what we reporters always do. I checked the temperatures (85 degrees, wow), talked to my bosses and threw a bunch of clothes in a suitcase after I got the go-ahead. I kissed my kids and ran out the door to make a flight to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic at 9 p.m. -- just a few hours after the quake hit. Luckily, I grabbed a small knapsack with hand sanitizer, a pack towel and other assorted supplies that would end up being lifesavers in those initial days.

My 7-year-old son helped me pack my socks. As it would turn out, there were not enough pairs.

On the first day that my producer and I arrived in Port-au-Prince, the stench of death and destruction was overwhelming. It seeps into everything -- your hair, your clothes, your bag, your reporter's notebook.

There are no words to describe some of the things we saw. As a mother, the hardest part was seeing partially draped bodies of children. Or a stray doll tossed in the rubble.

Television video can't possibly capture the enormity of the devastation, the scale of human suffering.

But I could tell stories of individuals, of some of the people who lived in all those shattered homes.

Kevin and Nazer were watching television when the quake hit. A cell phone video shows them dancing around to some kind of rap song. Such cute kids.

We watched for six hours as rescuers from a Miami-Dade search and rescue team went in after them. The homeowner had heard them tapping deep in the rubble.

When we learned that 5-year-old Kevin had already died, I was crushed; I broke down.

But then we saw little Nazer coming out. He was frightened and woefully skinny. He complained that he'd lost his front tooth. But he was alive.

In my broken French I asked "ca va?" -- how are you? -- and Nazer gave a weak thumbs-up.

The next day we went looking for Nazer at the hospital we had heard he was taken to. It was a mess. There is no system of patient registration. The injured are treated inside and then left to fend for themselves in the yard outdoors.

"I mean we're just throwing people anywhere and everywhere," a Canadian aid worker told me.