Becasue Jaime asked..

And I said I would post. Sorry its taken a while. Here is the basis of this: Joel, my husband, was in Haiti for his job- training other country's coast guard types- when the earthquake hit. I was actually talking to him on AIM when it hit, me not having a clue what he was going through. I just thought he stepped away; so I shut down and head home, expecting a text. Nothing. No biggie; internet is tricky sometimes. I go get our son, go home to feed everyone, the usual. Around 6, an hour after the quake, I get a call from a chief, wondering if I have heard from Joel. I tell him its been an hour, but I would let him know when Joel got back online. He then tells me bout the quake, and I am just like, ok. Within another hour, I had the news on, mother inlaw calling in hysterics, phones going crazy, and trying my best to calm my fears. As long as I kept the news off, I was fine. I focused on getting Logan to bed, then making more calls. While I tossed and turned in bed, trying to get sleep, waiting to hear word (which was around 8 the next morning) this is what my husband had to endure.

""So I had somebody ask me in the last couple of days, "What was it like to be in the Haiti earthquake?" I don't know whether it was idle curiosity or whether they thought they had missed some great adventure, but my reply was "It sucks, I don't recommend it." For whatever reason, that has been bugging me. Tonight I feel like answering honestly. And yes, this may be a bit graphic.

What was it like in the Haiti earthquake? Well, imagine if the place you had called home for three days suddenly started violently shaking around you. The walls and ceilings begin to fall on top of you. Thankfully, everything misses you, but you still get stung by flying chips of plaster and concrete. You jump for the door, because at some point, you remember reading that doorways are safest in an earthquake. As you open the door to take refuge, hoping the steel will protect you, you see your teammate, running down the hall, with no idea what to do, because he wasn't lucky enough to read the same book you did. You yell for him to get in the door with you, and together, the two of you clutch opposite sides of the doorframe, abstractly wondering how long the steel will hold. When the shaking stops, it is like the movies. Dead silence. Only this time, there are no sirens following, because you don't know it yet, but the hospitals collapsed in the earthquake. No one is there to drive them. You grab your issued survival kit, make sure your teammates are okay, then together jump off the balcony to the landscaping and patio below. As you walk around, probably in a state of shock, you see other guests and employees walking or sitting around, blood running from various wounds. You start to get an idea of what just happened, and you return to your room to gather more equipment. Your teammate retrieves the medical kit while you hear people asking, "What just happened?" For some reason you are oddly detached, and you reply, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, "It was an earthquake." Still somewhat dazed, you and your team wander out to the front of the hotel, hoping the cavalry from the Embassy is going to arrive to sweep you to safety. After a while, you realize they have enough issues of their own to deal with. The radio they issued is swamped with panicked calls, and you can't remember the code to your own sat-phone to call anyone. All you can think about is "I have to tell someone I'm safe so they don't freak out."

Eventually, the shock starts to wear off, and you run into some Embassy guys, who are almost as lost as you are. You volunteer to help if they need it. Your teammates, in the mean time, are busy handing out clothes, food, and water to the frightened people, and doing basic first aid on several injured children. After a while, the Embassy guys come back and ask if you want to help with some injured personnel that have been found. This is what you joined the CG for. Your whole team, being the Coasties they are, volunteers. You arrive in pitch blackness. As you walk, the light of your flashlight illuminates families laying in the streets, injured and dead members among them, staring blankly at you and the rubble that used to be their homes. When you arrive at the collapsed Embassy housing, you discover that the local guard force has already extracted the members from their houses, completed triage, and loaded them onto makeshift litters. You help load two injured personnel into an SUV to take them to a private clinic since the few hospitals that didn't collapse are full of injured people. The SUV leaves, and you start to carry the last guy towards the clinic. You walk, not knowing exactly when the SUV is coming back. Finally, you reach the point where you left your car. Your body aches from carrying the steel grate and the injured guy on it, but the Haitians refuse to set him down and keep insisting that everyone keep moving. Finally, an uninjured Embassy member convinces them that the SUV is coming back, and they can put him down until them.

The SUV finally returns, and you get the injured man to the clinic. You make a supply run, but other than that, you just talk to the injured US guys and try to keep their spirits up as injured Haitians begin to arrive. The clinic starts to fill up with wounded - a girl with her eye falling from its socket, a man so badly burned that his skin is falling off his body. After several hours, the Embassy guys tell you there is nothing left to do, and you can go back to the Embassy rented housing where your sponsor is and sleep. Several other people have taken refuge there too, so there is no place to sleep except the floor or outside. You sleep off and on until the sun comes up. After sunrise, you wait for tasking, hoping the Embassy will task you with more rescue or recovery work. Finally, the call comes, but it is an order to report to the Embassy for evacuation. As you drive back, you see an indication of the magnitude of the catastrophe - bodies stacked outside the clinic from last night, a truck full of drunk men driving bodies to the local cemetery. They pull back the tarp on their truck, and arms and legs stick out. You report to the Embassy, and within two hours, you are walking up to a CG C-130, torn, as photographers snap your picture. One part of you is ecstatic that you are leaving, but the other part feels like a coward to leave while there is work to be done. You see, less than 12 hours ago, a mother was begging you to help her save her children that were trapped in a collapsed house, but because you were responsible for the lives and health of two other people in your team, you had to refuse because it was too dangerous, telling her you would notify the Embassy, which you later did, but knowing that help would probably come too late. When you are safe in a neighboring country, you read the news and see that her husband died in the house, she found one child, and she is still missing another. You start to second guess yourself, wondering if maybe you could have helped her save them all. Two days after the quake, you are back at home with your wife and child, getting critical incident counseling, and trying to avoid the news that is focused on Haiti. You give short answers to people that ask, because you don't want to talk about it, and because no matter what the guys at your unit and the counselor say, you still think you should have done more. A couple of days later, your wife asks you in the morning why you were crying at night.

That is what it is like to be in the Haiti earthquake. And I had it easy.""

This is the evacuation Joel talked about. I found this picture on the BBC website, and Angela was able to save it somehow (Joel is the tall one)


And this is his room. He has a piece(s) of wall/ceiling that fell in his bag and unknowingly brought home. He was sitting in that black chair at the desk on his laptop, talking to me, when it hit