23239: (Hermantin)Disaster shocks Haitians in South Florida (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Thu, Sep. 23, 2004




HURRICANE JEANNE


Disaster shocks Haitians in South Florida

By foot and by plane, a local Haitian newscaster learns about the deaths of
his relatives after Jeanne flooded the seaside city of Gonaives.

BY TRENTON DANIEL

tdaniel@herald.com


They ranged in age from their 20s to their 60s -- five cousins, aunts and
uncles of Marc ''Nene'' Jeudy who were killed in Haiti by Hurricane Jeanne.

Jeudy, 42, a Haitian newscaster at WLQY-AM in North Miami, got the news
Tuesday night.

Richard and Altagrace died when their roof collapsed.

A truck slammed into Eddy when his Volkswagen got stuck in waist-high water.

Papycliou and Jeune drowned.

Like Jeudy, other South Florida Haitian Americans began to learn about the
fate of loved ones after days without news because roads and villages in the
Caribbean nation were flooded. Hundreds were killed in the storm.

Now the names of relatives like Jeudy's are starting to reach South Florida,
in some cases the old-fashioned way: by foot.

Jeudy's cousin Ernst saw the floating corpses and left Gonaives on Monday to
relay the report. A South Florida businessman, he waded through floodwaters
and mud until he caught a ride to St. Marc, an oceanfront town between
Gonaives and Port-au-Prince, then took a bus to the capital.

He caught a Miami-bound flight Tuesday to meet Jeudy.

When Jeudy got the news, the newscaster recused himself from the microphone.

''I couldn't do the show. I had to leave the station,'' he said Wednesday.

Jeudy stopped answering the phone because relatives from New York and New
Jersey kept calling. He sought out friends at Rapid Locator, an
import-export business owned by his friend Francois Joachin.

About a dozen friends and family members gathered there, trading reports of
a Gonaives that looked like Hades: bodies everywhere. Jeudy was being
interviewed by a local Haitian TV station.

On Friday, Jeudy plans to leave for Haiti and break the news to his elderly
mother, Marcelle. Right now, he has a cousin at her Port-au-Prince home
ensuring that nobody tells her of the deaths before he does, Jeudy said.

''She'll die; she has very high blood pressure,'' Jeudy said.

Like so many others in South Florida, Jeudy has two Gonaives cousins, Kettly
and Daddy, whose fate remains uncertain. He plans to search for them.

Boca Raton resident Clark Jacques didn't have a personal messenger like
Jeudy, but the reports were horrible all the same. The Gonaives native knew
a woman who had married his cousin; her five children and two grandchildren
drowned earlier, he said.

''We can't invent any words to explain this situation,'' Jacques said.

As private relief efforts gathered steam, U.S. Rep. Kendrick B. Meek pressed
President Bush to send humanitarian aid promptly to Haiti, saying the
administration's release of $60,000 was insufficient.

Jeudy, meanwhile, stood composed, his shirt pressed. Sunglasses hid his
eyes.

''I have no choice but to be strong,'' he said. ``But if you look inside,
it's killing me.''

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