Trauma comes in many forms, but I think few are as devastating as surviving one of the largest mass casualty events in the world. In a few minutes hundreds of thousands of people on an island smaller than any state in the US were gone. The survivors stood among rubble shocked and confused as all around us, the screaming started gaining in volume with each passing instant.
15 years later, my heart still skips a bit if my bed shakes when I sit, I frequently glance at my water glass to see if the water is still and every little noise still wakes me up.
I was alone that day, Nate would be born the year after, I had just gotten home and was on my computer writing when I heard a rumbling noise and my chair slid across the room, I didn’t have time to be puzzled, for the whole apartment started shaking, books falling off my shelf and I ran out the wall by my stairs fell down as I ran down them into the parking lot to join others also running out.
One apartment had fallen down and we managed to pull the young occupant out with minor injuries. The landlord didn’t show we learned later he and his wife were under the rubble at the supermarket that had fallen, luckily both will be rescued. But, we didn’t have time to wonder about them for the screaming was starting.
Those that had kept their phones started receiving calls, I braved my fears and went back inside to grab my own and the news started coming in, my friend made it back home she had been on the road when the quake hit and her face spoke volumes. It was bad, it was the worse.
My mother’s house was severely damaged but she was fine, my brothers were okay, one of the first deaths I learned of, a friend of mine L, managed to get out of the supermarket but a block of cement hit her in the back of the head, then… other deaths, and missing followed, another friend lost her two children along with 15 members of her family, another could not locate her son a young man, it would be 1 month before his body was found, the list of people I knew who died that day can’t fit here… but they fit in my heart.
The next few days we slept in the parking lot and pooled our resources, but soon those would run out, we rationed as best we could. One of the hardest things was washing up because the aftershocks lasted for weeks. Our water was running out, luckily someone knew someone and we managed to have a water truck come and fill our buckets.
The first time I ventured out of our little community after the quake I didn’t last 15 minutes, as I passed a school a pair of legs sticking out of the rubble sent me right back home. It took over 2 months for a semblance of normalcy to come back, my office building was gone, by sheer luck I had not left the laptop at work that day, 20+ years of work (yes I stayed at that job for almost 30 years, my boss’s daughter is Nate’s godmother) were on that laptop.
2 days after the quake I received a call from a woman I barely knew who had done some ads for us, she asked if she and her daughters could come stay with me because her area was gone and that’s how I gained 4 daughters.
The horror of the aftermath of the quake is only rivaled by the fear during the quake and every year on this day I send a prayer to those who departed, those I knew and those I didn’t over 200,000 souls on such a tiny little island mostly in a little area comparable in size to a county in the US.
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Muriel Vieux – January 12th, 2026 – ©All rights reserved
