Zillah teacher recalls Haiti quake

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Michele Deardorff took no pictures of the Haiti earthquake.

The idea of snapping photos of people's suffering felt rude and callous to her.

"I did not need to," said the 25-year-Zillah High School graduate. "I will never forget what I saw."

Deardorff was teaching in Haiti at the time of the Jan. 12 quake. She is back home now, remembering the devastation it caused.

But Deardorff also remembers Haiti as a beautiful country with kind people and great weather. She has plenty of pictures of those things.

And that's how she wants others to picture it -- as more than just news footage of dusty rubble, injured people and desperate looting.

Deardorff had been in Haiti since August teaching at a school in Pétion-Ville, a suburb of Haiti's densely populated capital.

Most of her students were either from wealthy Haitian families or children of visiting business leaders and embassy personnel. Just before the earthquake, she had agreed to do volunteer work teaching street children and was due to start within a few days.

"A lot changed in a minute," she said.

Deardorff lived with five other teachers in an apartment building about 20 minutes from campus. The school provided a van and driver for them.

She had just arrived home with her friends when the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. Haiti time, on Jan. 12.

Deardorff had never felt an earthquake before. She recalled standing in the doorway watching the building pitch and roll, thinking for a moment the shaking was too severe for just an earthquake.

When the movement stopped, the teachers turned off their generator and looked out of their apartment toward the east. She realized how wrong she was.

A cloud of dust dominated the horizon and collapsed shanty homes filled a nearby ravine. Then, "You could just hear the screaming, hear shrieks everywhere, all around you," she said.

Deardorff and friends were unhurt. They grabbed some simple first aid supplies and walked across the street to a Canadian and French Red Cross administration office.

For a few days, they bounced around Port-au-Prince, cleaning the wounds of injured people in yards and soccer fields. Meanwhile, a Haitian medical student accompanied them and stitched up cuts. The teachers borrowed supplies and hitched rides from aid groups such as the Red Cross and World Vision.

They saw a lot of broken bones, scrapes and head wounds. They were able to drive some people to nearby hospitals, some of which were treating patients on their front lawns.

At night, they slept outside their apartment, at the administration office, or at one of the teachers' grandmother's house in Port-au-Prince. Everywhere they went, people slept on the ground. The lucky ones had blankets. Most had nothing.

Deardorff and her friends offered to help but were turned down. They tried volunteering at orphanages but nurses were already there. They unloaded a few food trucks but organizations wanted to hire locals.

"We really got the impression that we were becoming more of a burden," Deardorff said.

That's when they decided to leave.

Deardorff booked a commercial flight to Seattle and arrived about midnight Jan. 23. Her parents, Leslie and Jeff Deardorff, met her and drove her home the next morning. She has been resting at her parents' house since.

The parents heard their daughter's firsthand account after she returned. Until she was home, all they knew from a brief e-mail from her after the deadly earthquake was that she was "OK."

"We're just so proud of the choices that she made," Leslie Deardorff said.

Deardorff, the oldest of three siblings, is unsure of her plans now.

She wants to return to Haiti but the school, though it didn't collapse, will not reopen any time soon. She already has inquired with aid organizations, but they want medical expertise right now.

She urges Americans to stay tuned in to Haiti's plight even after the initial shock wears off.

"This is not something that can be solved in a month or even a year, so as time passes and stories fade from the news, we beg, please do not forget about Haiti," Deardorff said in an e-mail.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.