Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA) Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al is lucky to be alive, af­ter a 7.3-mag­ni­tude earth­quake that rocked Haiti on Tues­day. Lutch­me­di­al, who is in Haiti for a Caribbean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty Over­sight Sys­tem board meet­ing, ar­rived there on Tues­day from Mi­a­mi, along with 16 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from oth­er Cari­com coun­tries and the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States. He is the on­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Trinidad. The death toll in the Caribbean's most im­pov­er­ished na­tion could run in­to thou­sands. The earth­quake was one of the largest ever to hit the area.

RIGHT: Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al...lucky es­cape

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the tremor start­ed around 4.53 pm on Tues­day, ten miles south-west of Port-au-Prince. Fran­cis Reg­is, act­ing as di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the CAA, said he spoke with Lutch­me­di­al very briefly yes­ter­day. "I have spo­ken to Mr Lutch­me­di­al and he said he is okay and that the team is safe," he said. "At the time, there was very lit­tle com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it was ex­treme­ly lim­it­ed." Reg­is could not say at what time the del­e­ga­tion ar­rived in Haiti from Mi­a­mi, or if they were re­ceiv­ing food or wa­ter. He said they were sched­uled to stay at the Caribe and the Mon­tano ho­tels. How­ev­er, they nev­er made it. The ho­tels were bad­ly dam­aged in the quake be­fore they checked in. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives were ex­pect­ed to re­turn to their coun­tries on Sat­ur­day.

How­ev­er, a source said that a bus was trans­port­ing the del­e­ga­tion from the air­port to the ho­tel on Tues­day. The source added that the bus dri­ver de­cid­ed to take the team to his home af­ter see­ing the dam­age to the ho­tel. But, up­on ar­riv­ing at his home, he dis­cov­ered that it, too, had been de­mol­ished, forc­ing the team to spend Tues­day night at a ten­nis court. Reg­is said he had heard that sto­ry, but poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion pre­vent­ed him from gath­er­ing more de­tails from Lutch­me­di­al. He added that arrange­ments had been made to send a re­lief flight in­to Haiti for the team. "At this point in time, we have made arrange­ments to send one of the re­lief flights in­to Haiti to get the team out," he said. Reg­is, how­ev­er, could not say how soon it would be done. He said Lutch­me­di­al's fam­i­ly had been con­tact­ed and as­sured of his safe­ty.

Gopee-Scoon re­sponds

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon said send­ing an air­plane in dev­as­tat­ed Haiti to res­cue the of­fi­cials would be "like look­ing for a nee­dle in a haystack." "Let's re­main hope­ful...It has been dif­fi­cult to speak with them," she said. "I am con­cerned, but there are no com­mu­ni­ca­tion lines to make con­tact. "I un­der­stand that Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al is there but not know­ing where to go and where to look will be dif­fi­cult. "How­ev­er, we will act in the best in­ter­est of these of­fi­cials." While she did not rule out send­ing an air­plane "when com­mu­ni­ca­tion is made," Gopee-Scoon said Haiti would be like a vir­tu­al war zone.