Award-winning photojournalist Marc Asnin had just gotten to sleep in the early morning hours of Jan. 20 when he felt a deep rumble through his body leading to a crescendo of shaking that sent weary Haitians – survivors of last week’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake – running through the Israeli field hospital in Port-au-Prince that served as his home for several days.
While it registered 6.1 on the Richter scale, the aftershock, says the New York native, encapsulated the trauma and fear endured by the thousands who were spared death only to live through the nightmare of disease and starvation.
“They were running out of the tents,” says Asnin, who just days before accompanied Rabbi Shimon Pelman, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of the Dominican Republic, through the streets of the devastated Haitian capital. “They were screaming and clearly very scared.”
Such has life become in the tiny Caribbean nation, which announced the suspension of search and rescue efforts over the weekend. The streets are filled with teeming masses of the tired and hungry, grasping at straws in a battle for sustenance. Many have fled Port-au-Prince for rural villages, and those who have remained behind live amidst the dead.
“Almost every building in site is collapsed or heavily damaged,” says Meir Lax, a rabbinical student from New York who was dispatched to the region by Rabbi Mendel Zarchi, the Puerto Rico-based director of Chabad of the Caribbean, shortly after the earthquake and travelled with Asnin and Pelman to distributed food, water and medicine. “There are hundreds of thousands of people roaming the streets looking completely dazed, and all the cemeteries have freshly dug graves.
“Immediately past the main entrance to the airport are thousands waiting at the gates to the World Food Programme hoping to get something to eat,” he continues, “but there is no food coming out.”
Asnin says that last week, Israel Defense Force doctors, nurses and search teams seized on bits of good news amidst the destruction. When a team from the New York City fire and police departments dropped off a brother and sister that had been rescued from the rumble, the entire hospital erupted in joy.
“At that point, most people thought there was no chance of survivors anymore,” relates the photographer. “It doesn’t matter who you are here, everyone talks like it’s a miracle.”
And despite Haiti’s suspension of rescue efforts, Pelman – who set up a relief fund two weeks ago and is working with local organization and the United Nations to ferry in trucks of medicine, food, water and children’s shoes – remains hopeful that more miracles are on the horizon. He’s pushing search teams to continue work at Port-au-Prince’s Hotel Montana, where four Lynn University students from Florida, two of their professors and a Jewish businessman from Montreal, Canada, are believed to be trapped.
“The border is all but closed,” reports Pelman from his S. Domingo Chabad House. “Breakdowns in security have made it dangerous for trucks to cross without protection. So some supplies have to be flown in, and we have to get escorts for our shipments.
“People of goodwill everywhere, though, are supporting many organizations here to try to turn things around,” he continues. “With G-d’s help, we can bring hope back to the people of Haiti.”
Asnin recalls one exchange he witnessed between the rabbi and a Haitian woman who lost her husband in the disaster. Left with three daughters and a son, but little in the way of possessions, she was wondering what to do.
“The woman was praying, and he was praying,” says Asnin. “He was telling her to hang in there, to think good thoughts.
“It’s hard for them,” he adds. “The people are so hungry.”
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