Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Hor­rif­ic scenes of dead bod­ies, in­jured chil­dren and thou­sands of bloody peo­ple scream­ing in the streets of Port-au-Prince have left Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al in tears and with night­mares. Lutch­me­di­al says he is emo­tion­al­ly af­fect­ed when he re­counts his ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­lax­ing with his wife Mavis and two of his sons, Avinash and Valmi­ki, at his Cunu­pia home yes­ter­day, the 57-year-old di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty said: "Every­time I have to re­live the ex­pe­ri­ence it is af­fect­ing me." When he ar­rived in Trinidad last Fri­day night, Lutch­me­di­al wore a per­ma­nent smile as he greet­ed his fam­i­ly and col­leagues in the VIP room at the air­port, but he burst in­to tears when he vis­it­ed his doc­tor yes­ter­day.

"I cried for about 30 min­utes by my doc­tor. He told me I was sup­press­ing my emo­tions and I should let it all out. "Every­time I talk about it I feel so much pain and hurt."

His close friend and col­league, Trinida­di­an Gre­go­ry McAlpin, who has been liv­ing in An­tigua, re­mains miss­ing, along with three oth­er del­e­gates who were in Haiti for a CAS­SOS board meet­ing. Lutch­me­di­al, fa­ther of four sons and grand­fa­ther of four, sur­vived last Tues­day's 7.3-mag­ni­tude earth­quake be­cause he changed his flight. In deep re­flec­tion, he said he was grate­ful he es­caped un­harmed, but it pained his heart to look at in­jured peo­ple, un­able to as­sist. "I saw peo­ple bleed­ing, but there were no ban­dages to as­sist. I was pow­er­less. I couldn't say 'let me take you to a hos­pi­tal.'" He said the de­ci­sion to leave Haiti last Wednes­day night to go to Ja­maica with­out his miss­ing col­leagues was heart-wrench­ing, but he had to leave.

There were lim­i­ta­tions with food, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ac­com­mo­da­tion. Look­ing to­wards the ceil­ing in his liv­ing room, he said: "In less than 30 sec­onds, thou­sands of peo­ple died all around me, and see­ing all that hu­man suf­fer­ing and be­ing un­able to do some­thing pained me. "I keep dream­ing all the things I saw...a ba­by with a crushed head and bulging eyes, corpses stacked high and home­less chil­dren scream­ing. "For those who didn't have a heart, they would have found one in Haiti. "If they had no com­pas­sion or love they were forced to bring that out." He said the ex­pe­ri­ence had made him more con­scious of the fragili­ty of life. His grand­son, Aaden, who cel­e­brat­ed his sixth birth­day yes­ter­day, told him he thought he was dead. Lutch­me­di­al said:

"When Aaden met me at the air­port, he said: 'Pa­pa, I thought you were dead, but you are alive.'" His elat­ed wife, who said she hadn't slept since last Tues­day, said she looked at her hus­band as he slept all night. I didn't sleep last night, I kept look­ing at Ramesh how he was sleep­ing.