Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

An abrupt de­ci­sion to change his trav­el plans is the rea­son Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al sur­vived Haiti's dev­as­tat­ing 7.3-mag­ni­tude earth­quake on Tues­day. Lutch­me­di­al, di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA), ar­rived there on Tues­day at 4 pm for a Caribbean Avi­a­tion Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty Over­sight Sys­tem board meet­ing. He and 17 oth­er di­rec­tor gen­er­als from the Cari­com and OECS were booked at the Mon­tana and Karibe Ho­tels. Lutch­me­di­al and four oth­er di­rec­tor gen­er­als, among them Gre­go­ry Mc Alpin, di­rec­tor of Flight Safe­ty East­ern Caribbean Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty were booked at the Mon­tana. But Lutch­me­di­al did not ar­rive with them be­cause he changed his flight from 9.55 am, from Mi­a­mi to Haiti, to 2.05 pm. He nev­er made it to the ho­tel. It was flat­tened and three of his four col­leagues re­main miss­ing.

A re­lease from the For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry late yes­ter­day said the min­istry had been ad­vised that Lutch­me­di­al and Mc Alpin were the on­ly two T&T na­tion­als in Haiti at the time of the earth­quake. Mc Alpin has been liv­ing in An­tigua for the past 11 years. The re­lease said ef­forts were be­ing made to have Mc Alpin flown out of Haiti. The re­lease did not say whether Mc Alpin would be brought to Trinidad. In a tele­phone in­ter­view ear­li­er from Ja­maica Lutch­me­di­al said: "I ar­rived in Haiti around 4 pm (Tues­day) and was on my way to the Mon­tana Ho­tel when the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake struck, ap­prox­i­mate­ly at 5 pm. "The air­port and the ho­tels are on op­po­site sides of Port-au-Prince. "I was in the bus tak­ing pic­tures along the way when I heard a whistling sound. I thought there were me­chan­i­cal prob­lems with the ve­hi­cle, maybe the shocks or the sus­pen­sion."

Lutch­me­di­al said hous­es and build­ings around him sud­den­ly col­lapsed and it was then he re­alised it was an earth­quake. He said: "The ve­hi­cle was shak­ing vi­o­lent­ly. It was a very in­tense shake. I re­mained calm." Fright­ful im­ages of in­jured peo­ple, scream­ing and bleed­ing, play like a movie in his mind, he said, af­ter spend­ing close to two days in the rav­aged coun­try. "I saw a man run­ning with a ba­by in his arms. The ba­by's head was crushed. All along the way to the Mon­tana I saw thou­sands of in­jured peo­ple. A woman from New Zealand, who said she worked for an in­ter­na­tion­al agency, ap­proached me, with bleed­ing hands, beg­ging for help to res­cue her hus­band and three daugh­ters, one of them a ba­by. They were trapped on the ground floor of an apart­ment build­ing," he said.

Lutch­me­di­al said he shout­ed for help but was told it was too dan­ger­ous to at­tempt to move the de­bris. The Karibe Ho­tel al­so col­lapsed. Lutch­me­di­al said he spent Tues­day night on a lawn ten­nis court with­out run­ning wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, tele­phone and toi­let fa­cil­i­ties. He said at sun­rise on Wednes­day the sight was hor­rif­ic. He added: "There were chil­dren cry­ing, heavy pieces of con­crete and dead bod­ies piled high. Peo­ple lined the streets, home­less and with hope­less­ness. My heart bled for them, es­pe­cial­ly the chil­dren." The group man­aged to make it to the Hait­ian Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, close to the air­port, where there was In­ter­net ac­cess.

In­tent on try­ing to lo­cate his col­leagues, he said he went to the Mon­tana ru­ins and the Unit­ed Na­tions Hos­pi­tal but his ef­forts were fu­tile. "By late Wednes­day af­ter­noon, we re-as­sessed our sit­u­a­tion, with re­spect to food, wa­ter, se­cu­ri­ty, ac­com­mo­da­tion and re­li­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and de­cid­ed we had to leave Haiti. "Through the Ja­maican Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, ten of us left on a pri­vate char­ter flight to Ja­maica. We still have no word on our miss­ing col­leagues." Grate­ful for life, he is look­ing for­ward to meet­ing his fam­i­ly and loved ones. "I thank God for life," he said. He is ex­pect­ed to re­turn home to­day.