One brave little girl has one big story to tell.
Moments before the earthquake struck Haiti, Victoria Milord stood in her room in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Carrefour Feuille and tried to reach a box on an armoire. Then the room began to tremble.
“The box fell on me. Everything started shaking. I landed on my back and the closet fell on me,” said the 10-year-old, now standing behind the podium at Congressmember Gregory Meeks’ office beside her mother, Rose-May Milord, on Friday, January 22.
“My grandmother called ‘Vicky! Vicky!’ and my grandmother grabbed me. I started thanking God I was with my grandmother.”
As news of the January 12, 7.0-magnitude quake reverberated around the world, thousand of miles away in her home in Queens Village, Rose-May grew desperate at the inability to communicate with her daughter, who she had sent to boarding school in Haiti and to live with her grandmother.
Rose-May didn’t hear from her mother and Victoria until Friday, January 15. She found them because she finally got through to the cell phone of a neighbor who had been sleeping on the sidewalk along with her family.
“I wouldn’t be able to share this moment with you,” said Rose-May as she fought back tears, “if it weren’t for my pouring my heart out to Marilyn Barnes.” Barnes is the immigration liaison in Meeks’ office who urged Rose-May to make sure her daughter got to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.
In the meantime, Barnes sent the Embassy copies of Victoria’s birth certificate, a color photograph and other identifying materials. Fortunately, Victoria still had her passport because their house did not collapse.
Victoria arrived at JFK airport on Tuesday, January 19, in time to celebrate her 10th birthday on Thursday, January 21.
“In my country, when you are in trouble they come back and get you,” Victoria told reporters when asked whether or not she had been afraid. By Monday, January 25, the State Department had evacuated 10,901 American citizens from Haiti.
Many people, but not all, within the Haitian community in Queens can now share similar stories of reunions, either physical or via phone calls.
“We have heard from my family members,” said Adee Isaac, a staff member at the Cambria Heights organization Haitians-Americans United for Progress. “But my mom still has friends who have not heard.”
American Red Cross spokesperson Marianne Darlak and disaster specialist Steve McAndrew – currently on the ground in Haiti – informed that the International Red Cross has roaming teams with satellite phones on which Haitians can call family members abroad. The International Red Cross has also set up a web site, www.icrc.org/familylinks, which tracks people who are missing or who have been found.
“People don’t have phone numbers because they were in cell phones or phonebooks that are now under the rubble,” said Darlak.
This registry becomes even more important now, over two weeks after the earthquake, because rescue and recovery efforts have officially ceased and attention has completely shifted to relief and rebuilding. The Haitian government has put the toll at over 150,000 and said it could reach 200,000.
“On the ground the situation has improvised since day one when we couldn’t drive without seeing dead bodies. All the cadavers have been removed,” said McAndrew. “Help is trickling in but a lot of people still need help.”
For the survivors, McAndrew said that the 25 Red Cross international societies have divided up the labor, and in the devastated areas have set up three field hospitals, water treatment centers and portable water units. Three million pre-packaged meals have left Miami for Haiti – which they will coordinate with the UN World Food Program to distribute – and two million litters of water. The Red Cross has created 25,000 tent shelters that now house a portion of the 700,000 to 800,000 Haitians sleeping on the streets. Another 500,000 Haitians have left Port-au-Prince for other regions of the country.
As far as contributions, the Red Cross needs cash.
“People don’t realize that cash donations means that we can buy things in the region,” McAndrews said about how the Red Cross uses cash to put people to work locally. “With cash, we can be flexible and it allows us to regenerate the economy.”
To also help regenerate the local Haitian economy, the U.S. government had pledged – as of Sunday, January 24 – $255 million in assistance, according to the State Department.
But President Barack Obama also granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to undocumented Haitians in the U.S. on Friday, January 15, so they could help rebuild Haiti with the money they send back. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began to accept TPS applications on Thursday, January 21. Various credible organizations, like the CUNY School of Law, will offer free help with the filing of these applications.
Another potential way to help rebuild Haiti, suggested Congressmember Meeks, was with assistance modeled after the Marshall Plan that helped war-torn Europe get back on its feet after 1945. He, as well as, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, also called for some kind of debt relief. Currently, Haiti faces approximately $429 million of external debt to the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB). The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, sits on the Board of Governors of the IDB.
“This is a catastrophe that will take a united effort,” said Meeks. “But this is indeed a strong and resilient people. A people full of hope.”
