After school I was making my way back to my classroom to meet with any students who had questions about the test for tomorrow. On my way over, Gerdeley waved me over to the picnic table because she had questions about her 6th grade math homework. I sat down and started helping her and her classmate, Farah. Only about five minutes passed and I began to notice a strange smell in the air. It had an odd odor, but there is always a strange smell in the air here. A minute later I looked up and saw Ermilien, a boy who works at Sonlight, running as fast as he could toward the generator room and once he got there he shut it off. I immediately wondered if it was burning oil and he had ran to shut it down before any damage happened. A few seconds later and about five Haitians came running from the construction site, and went sprinting past down the school hallway toward the back of the school. I had no idea why they were running so fast. I had thought something was wrong with the generator and when I saw them running in the opposite direction of the generator because there might have been diesel fuel burning and they were running because they thought it would explode. This didn’t seem out of the question considering there was a diesel explosion just a year ago. I had no idea what was going on.
As I was looking around, I heard someone yell that there was a fire. I jumped up and ran to the back of the school to see where the men had run to. As I turned the corner I had a straight view to the back of the school and noticed it was filled with brown smoke. It looked as if a bomb had gone off and threw up a cloud of brown dust mixed with smoke. I was still trying to piece this together and thought that the incinerator, which is behind the school, had exploded and blasted smoke and ashes into the air. The smoke was so thick that I couldn’t even see the incinerator which is at least 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide.
I took off running toward the smoke to see what was going on. For whatever reason, I had grabbed my books (along with my students’ homework) and left my laptop bag at the picnic table, so when I got to the back I tossed them onto another table as I finally could see what was happening. The storage sheds had caught fire below the apartments and were burning at an incredibly fast rate. People were running around trying to pull out whatever they could so there was less fuel to burn at the same time that others were trying to put out the fire with the only water hose we have back there.
For those of you who are not familiar with Sonlight, we have a building behind the school and off to the right. The property is somewhat in the shape of an upside down “L”. The school takes up the vertical part of the “L” and then as the property turns to the right, there is a soccer field and then the apartments just past the field. The two story building is long and narrow. Upstairs are three apartments. Below are storage sheds along with one of the sheds being designated as a room for tools. All three families that live in the apartments all have young children. One baby is just a few months, the other is about a year and a half, and the oldest is just over two years. Fortunately, the building is concrete, so the fire was contained to the lower level!
As I arrived I noticed people running in and out of the storage sheds. There are several garage doors that can be opened however each door doesn’t open to a separated room. The storage area is entirely open starting from door 1 to door 4, so the fire spread from one room to the next. At the time I couldn’t see inside the doors more than a few feet. The smoke was too thick so you would just hold your breath and run in to grab stuff and run back out. We weren’t necessarily running in to grab things to try to save them, but we needed to limit the fuel that was inside. I started by grabbing three wooden chairs and dragged them outside. As I was pulling stuff out, John and a few others were spraying water from the hose up into the ceiling where the fire seemed to be contained. As I mentioned, the building is concrete, however storage compartments had been built out of wood up against the ceiling for storing mattresses and some wood trim. As you know, mattresses burn very fast and smell horrible. It wasn’t just that the smoke was thick, but that it burned my lungs a little when I breathed it in. Though I held my breath when I ran inside, it was still hard to breathe when I got out. The smoke was almost too thick just to stand outside of the building. The soccer field, which is about 100 yards away, was a haze of smoke.
A few minutes later, I saw someone had come back from the generator room with a fire extinguisher. Just then, I took off toward home to see if we had one at our house. I ran inside yelling for someone to help me find one. Since we didn’t see one, I left and told Jonny to look for one and to bring it over if he found it. I ran back past Roger and Norma’s place and went running into Norma’s kitchen and grabbed one off the wall.
By the time I got back, the smoke had intensified and I was so out of breath that I couldn’t quite get to the building because I needed to catch my breath. A couple minutes passed and the wind must have picked up enough to carry some of the wind away so I was able to get closer. While I was gone, everyone who was there had been able to get the fire under control and at that time I saw a chain of people filling buckets of water and running them into another room which was filled with smoke. It was so thick that no one could see the fire inside, so one after another, they tossed buckets of water inside as an attempt to put the fire out. Fortunately for us, the fire stayed on top where the overhead storage compartments were and didn’t do too much damage to the stuff below considering that it all could have burned.
Of course, no one cared to get pictures while the worst was happening, but Jonny did get some pictures of the aftermath which are below.
Though some of these pictures may look terrible, the damage is much smaller than it could have been. Also, I have to say that the Haitians here are incredible people. Like I said, the smoke was intense and very thick, though they would run right inside choking the whole time as if they were trying to save their own homes with their families inside. It seems that because life is so difficult in general for Haitians, I think that their ability to deal with disasters is second nature. Most people would never consider running into a burning building when there aren’t lives to be saved, but these people are very selfless when it comes to helping out, especially in times of need. They understand that there isn’t a fire department down the street and that if your house is on fire, you are the fire department.
If you want to say a few prayers about this, I have a few thoughts. Of course, praise God that the only damage was material and that everyone is safe. However, please pray for blessings upon the people of Haiti, especially those who work so generously and who have such a concern for those around them. I cannot get the images out of my mind of the men who were running inside coughing as the smoke surrounded them. I also noticed many people with bloodshot eyes and water soaked clothing from trying to get the fire put out. Please pray for them; they are incredible!
2 comments:
Man, I'm glad you are all okay.
Wow - me too. reading about the way everyone worked together so well is inspiring.
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