HAITI: University rector reports on quake devastation

07 February 2010

"It's my first time on the internet since Tuesday's earthquake," writes Dr Jacky Lumarque, Rector of Université Quisqueya in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. "My apologies to friends who may have been worried by my silence but I have been focused on rescue operations and assistance to families. I was bent on not ending rescue operations until getting confirmation that the persons we were searching for had indeed died."

"Here's the situation..." he continues in a statement posted on websites, including that of Professor Norman Girvan, a research fellow at the University of West Indies Graduate Institute of International Relations in St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.

"I stopped searching for survivors for good and I am finally able to extract those corpses that have been identified: five students from the faculty of education, including two priests from the Salesiens congregation, a monk and a nun from the St Croix congregation, a lecturer, an engineer and two gardeners. We will find out this morning if there are more victims that can be identified.

"The corpses are badly decomposed and we had to turn a water tank into a grave, in the botanical garden. This location will become a mausoleum dedicated to the victims of the earthquake."
Full statement on Norman Girvan's site

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