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http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2010/01/world/haiti.360/index.html
Haitian Earthquake January 12, 2010
Feb 20, 2010 posted
Paul visiting a village outside of Liogane
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PORT-AU-PRINCE,
HaitiÑU.S. Coast Guard Chief Paul Cormier, a member of
Coast Guard Reserve Port Security Unit (PSU) 309, talks
with orphans in a village outside Liogane, where he
mentors local children, Jan. 25, 2010. CormierÕs public
non-profit organization, Soleil Foundation, is a charity
created to help alleviate poverty in Haiti through
providing education. Cormier shares his time between his
home in Michigan and Haiti, where he has built a home in
the village he supports. Distributes humanitarian aid in
a village outside Liogane. Photo by
Petty Officer 3rd Class Brandon Blackwell. |
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Feb 2, 2010
Jan 25, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—U.S. Coast Guard Chief Paul Cormier, a member of Coast
Guard Reserve Port Security Unit (PSU) 309, assesses earthquake damage with a
Canadian reporter in Liogane, Jan. 25, 2010. Cormier’s public non-profit
organization, Soleil Foundation, is a charity created to help alleviate poverty
in Haiti through providing education. Cormier shares his time between his homes
in Michigan and Haiti, where he mentors local children. Photo by Petty Officer
3rd Class Brandon Blackwell.
January 24, 2010
A letter from Paul
Thanks so much for your efforts. Right now my foundation needs money.
People can
donate using the Soleilfoundation.org web site. The bank that I use to hold my
foundation's money, is still intact, but the director was crushed to death in
her
house in Leogane. My kids are all hungry and haven't eaten much in a week.
But,
that is a problem I'm trying to deal with here. The U.S. Marines have taken
over that geographical area. I'm happy about that, but food and supplies are
still
moving at a snail's pace. We have much rebuilding to do. If you know of anyone
with engineering expertise; masons; builders; etc., we will need them to come
here
and help, once we can restore the basic infrastructure. My village near Leogane
just got hit with another huge tremor this morning. I received a phone call
from
my director early today. He said that the kids are very hungry, scared and
crying. They are asking why I can't get food to
them. There is so much bureaucracy here, it's just ridiculous. I wish
they could
respond like the Coast Guard responds. But that's not happening.
So, what I need you to do is raise money for the Soleil Foundation.
I personally
guarantee that every single penny will go to relief efforts for my kids and
their
families. I will personally handle all of the administrative expenses.
Thanks for
your continued help and God Bless.
MI Live January 21, 2010
http://www.mlive.com/mudpuppy/index.ssf/2010/01/cormier_bay_city_haiti_earthquake.html
Paul Cormier was hanging on for dear life when a massive earthquake hit Haiti on
Jan. 12.
Cormier, of Bay City, has been traveling to a small fishing village outside of
Leogane, Haiti, for years to help educate children at a school for orphans. He
wrapped his arms around a tree when the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck.
“It’s not like you see on TV,” he said.
“This wasn’t just shaking. It was throwing us. The ground was moving 6 feet in
one direction and 6 feet in another direction.
“Houses were thrown into the street. You don’t even see this in the movies
Cormier has built a small house in the village, where he stays during visits. He
was in his backyard when the quake hit.
“You have to react fast,” he said. “There was no notice. I had to sprint from
one end of my backyard to my front yard.”
A wall next to his house was toppled by the quake. His house was damaged, but
remained standing.
“Only God saved me,” he said. “Half the people died” in Leogane, he said.
“The whole town was crushed, everything. There are just bodies everywhere — the
people that tried to get out and couldn’t.
“I could have easily been just crushed to death,” he added. “There was so much
luck involved in me not dying.
Cormier spoke to The Times on Wednesday night, from a satellite phone at the
U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince, about 20 miles from Leogane. He said the embassy
is a newer building and came away unscathed.
Cormier, Bay County’s former emergency services director, established the
nonprofit Soleil Foundation in
the 1990s to help educate impoverished children in
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Cormier said there are about 2,000 people in the village, and only one child was
killed in the quake.
He plans to remain in Haiti for the time being, and hopes to adopt two Haitian
children he’s helped raise since they were babies, and bring them back to Bay
City. The boys are Nason, 15, and Anarc, 14.
Cormier said more than 20 people in the village have been able to help him with
relief efforts. He helped train them on how to handle disasters in 2004 as part
of a Community Emergency Response Training, or CERT, program. Residents were
taught how to rescue people from emergency situations and how to get victims to
medical services. The training was in response to Hurricane Jeanne, which hit
Gonaives, Haiti,
in 2004, killing more than 2,500 people.
“After the quake hit, the first thing we did was account for everybody, got
medical bags and went to other villages … to treat wounds,” he recalled.
“I was very, very proud.”
Cormier estimates up to 5,000 died in Leogane, outside the village.
He described the scene in Haiti as “surreal.”
“For me, it’s been a very big emotional roller coaster,” he said.
“Port-au-Prince is about 40 percent destroyed,” he said. “The capitol is down.
It kind of looks like a beautiful white palace, but it’s on the ground now.”
Cormier, a wellness officer for the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves based in Ohio,
said he’s been working on relief efforts with the U.S. Federal Emergency
Management Agency and other military agencies and aid groups.
He speaks the Creole language, and said he’s been working long days to get food
and medical supplies to his village. Cormier said he’s on active duty for the
Coast Guard in Haiti, and the agency thought he was missing for two days after
the quake.
“Because nobody heard from me, they thought I didn’t make it. But I made it.”
Cormier said the generosity of the world is evident in Haiti. He said he’s seen
tons of aid arriving in the country.
Most of Leogane has been reduced to rubble, he said.
“We lost at least 1,000 people in structures in Leogane, if not 5,000. Who knows
Paul Cormier, Bay County's former emergency services director, was in Haiti when
the massive Jan. 12 earthquake hit, killing thousands.
Cormier, 54, of Bay City, survived the quake by hanging on to a tree in
Leogane, Haiti, he said in a phone interview Wednesday night.
Cormier, a member of the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves, has been in Haiti since Dec.
29. He's living in a village, volunteering at an orphanage that he's visited
regularly for years. Cormier founded a nonprofit foundation in the 1990s to
educate impoverished children in Haiti.
"I was in Leogane. I was in the epicenter," Cormier said. "Only God saved me.
Half the people died. The whole town was crushed ...
"I was at my house. I was just hanging on to a tree and it was just throwing me
right and left, for 45 seconds.
January 16, 2010Paul is still in
Haiti and has teamed up with the Coast Guard DOG Unit. I talked
to him directly Via Satellite Phone today. From:
Mark Cormier
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Earth Quake News: From The Christian Science Monitor
So far, aid workers are scarce
While UN trucks patrol the streets handing out emergency biscuits and
water-purification tablets, many residents complain that government and
international relief workers seem unevenly dispersed.
“It seems that they are hiding,” says Paul Cormier, who runs an
orphanage.
Assistance is pouring in from all over the world, but the
distribution of aid and movement of aid workers, doctors, and rescue
workers, have been stymied so far by the complete lack of infrastructure
left in the wake of Tuesday's earthquake. Cellphone networks are still
down, crippling crucial communication, and many roads are blocked by
rubble or people left homeless.
Neighbor helping neighbor
In the many areas where no relief has arrived, the only help comes
from individual efforts like those of Mr. Cormier, at the orphanage.
When the quake hit, he hung onto a tree for his life. "It felt like a
freight train was underneath,” he says. The nearby hospital was damaged
and the doctors and nurses left to search for and help their own
families.
With his children and staff safe, he’s been trolling the street on
his motorbike performing triage.
“I am happy to be a part of this recovery," he says. "I love Haiti.”
Reuters:
January 14 2010
The next 24 hours will be critical," said U.S.
Coast Guard officer Paul Cormier, 54, a qualified emergency worker who runs an
orphanage in Haiti and has triaged 300 people since Tuesday's disaster.
Haiti earthquake hits home for McKinley
Reynoldsburg police officer recalls six-month
stint with UN
Thursday, January 14, 2010 3:40 PM
ThisWeek Staff Writer
When Reynoldsburg Police Lt. Scott McKinley saw the first
televised reports about the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, he felt
the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
McKinley returned from Haiti on June 28 after spending six
months on the Caribbean island as a senior U.S. military
observer and maritime adviser for the United Nations
stabilization effort there.
Damage to the United Nations headquarters building, in
particular, caught his attention.
"I was watching the day after it happened and the hair on the
back of my neck stood up when I saw the door I used to go into
this building every day and behind it, the entire building had
collapsed - a place you'd just been to completely destroyed and
some of the people you worked with are missing and presumed
dead," he said.
McKinley said he called a Coast Guard point of contact to see if
his replacement, Commander Joe Althouse, was OK but was told he
hadn't been heard from.
"I was worried because I know him and briefed him prior to going
down there," McKinley said.
Eventually, McKinley said, Althouse made a satellite phone call
to verify that he and three others who worked with him were able
to get out of the UN building safely.
McKinley is a captain in the United States Coast Guard Reserve,
where he has served for the past 22 years. Because he had a law
enforcement and port security background, he said, he was chosen
by UN officials to spend six months in Haiti and assist in
overseeing the operations of patrol boats along its maritime
boarder.
He said the UN headquarters in Haiti are in an old Christopher
Hotel on the eastern edge of Port-au-Prince.
"That's where I would go to work every day," he said. "It housed
about 100 UN staff workers and right now, they tell me the
special representative of the secretary general to the UN, Hedi
Anabi, and his deputy are missing."
He said another friend, Paul Cormier,
a chief in the Coast Guard reserve, is also missing. Cormier
runs a small orphanage/school in Port-au-Prince.
"He's been going there for years to do charity work and he's not
been heard from," McKinley said
MEMA Members Conduct CERT Training in Haiti
In
what can only be described as service far beyond the call of duty, Paul Cormier,
Bay County Emergency Manager, and Steve Leese, Huron County Emergency
Manager/911 Director, conducted a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT)
train-the-trainer course for 28 Haitians in November, 2004. The training was put
on at the Haitian headquarters of the Soleil Foundation, a small fishing village
outside of Leogane, Haiti. As previously reported in this publication, Paul
Cormier is the founder of the Soleil Foundation. Paul founded the Foundation in
1995 to provide free access to education for Haitian children. Cormier's first
visit to Haiti was when he was on active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard. He says
it was then that Haiti chose him. Appalled at the lack of public education,
Cormier made it his personal mission to help where he could.
At
the 2004 Fall Summit in Traverse City, Paul, Steve and Cathy Muma, Emergency
Manager and Public Safety Coordinator at Northwestern Michigan College, realized
over dinner the advantages a CERT program and Citizen Corp Council could offer a
third world country like Haiti. By November the three had formed a team which
included Leese's son, Tony, a senior at Ferris State University, Richard Marth,
a paramedic from Traverse City; Becky Johnson, a Coast Guard Reservist and her
father, Don. The team then made plans to implement CERT for the first time
outside of the U.S.
With the assistance and guidance of Gary Zulinski, Program Director of Michigan
Citizen Corps, the plan became a reality. The team left for Haiti November 21,
2004. They touched down in Port-Au-Prince and made their way by van to Leogane.
By
training Haitians to be trainers of the program, the team has built
sustainability into the endeavor. If the team is not able to return to Haiti,
the program will continue to grow as the trainers teach the members of new
teams.
When members of the 3rd District Emergency Management Association met
on December 10th for their regular monthly meeting, everyone sat in
rapt attention as Steve Leese outlined some of his more vivid memories of the
trip. Steve was amazed at the rampant poverty and mentioned more than once how
lucky we are to be living in the United States. Leese was also impressed by the
respect the students paid to the instructors and how neatly dressed and well
groomed they were when arriving at school each day. He also pointed out the lack
of basic necessities like transportation, decent roads, bridges and running
water.
Haiti is a country in dire need of assistance. With virtually no trees (the
forests have been stripped through the years to make charcoal for cooking); and
no emergency medical service; no fire departments, and the nearest hospital
often many miles away by foot - it is safe to say Haiti is a place where the
CERT training will be put to use. The country is regularly visited by
Hurricanes and a constant center for civil unrest.
Despite the political climate, the Michigan team is slated to return to Haiti in
November 2005 to test the Haitian trainer's students. The team will measure the
success of the program at that time against a pre-established list of measurable
criteria.
All MEMA members are encouraged to let Paul, Steve and the rest of the team know
you appreciate what a great job they did. It was conducted in the true spirit of
volunteerism.
Anyone interested in learning more about Haiti or the Soleil Foundation should
contact Paul Cormier, at (989) 894-5454, or visit the Foundation’s website at:
www.soleilfoundation.org.
Submitted By: Tim
London
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