Sebring man barely survives deadly quake

Standing on his front lawn in his family home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dieulange Michel felt the ground begin to shake. Then he saw the cars parked along the side of the road move up and down in a massive wave. His neighbors' homes turned inside out; their TVs, furniture and belongings lying on the top of the rubble.

He held on to a banana tree, the strongest object nearest to him, and was jerked around for what seemed to him five seconds - until it stopped.

It was 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, Jan 12, the day the most violent earthquake to hit Haiti in a century, measuring 7.0, struck.

On Wednesday a powerful 6.1 aftershock hit a little further away from the capital than the first quake. It was the strongest of 40 aftershocks, according to the Associated Press.

Now safely back in his Sebring home, Michel, 47, still feels the shaking.

"I asked God to never let me see something like this again," Michel said.

Michel went to visit his family and five children still living in Santo, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, on Dec. 8, and was supposed to return Wednesday, Jan. 13, the day after the quake.

But after the massive quake destroyed the city there was no way out or in to the capital, he said.

To Michel the quake felt like five seconds but others estimate it lasted 30 seconds. If it were more than that Michel doesn't think there would be any survivors.

Minutes after he was able to get on his feet a neighbor came to him for help. Michel's home was spared but still unsafe. He found a flashlight and went to a building down the street where the neighbor's child was stuck under three floors of heavy concrete.

Michel, the neighbor and others "worked, worked, worked" to pull off the blocks of concrete until they found the 10-year-old child who had minor head injuries.

His niece who lived about three miles away was not so lucky.

"She can't be alive," Michel said.

It's difficult for Michel to describe what he felt knowing that two of his daughters were not home by dark.

They could be trapped or dead, he thought. But they were outside of their school when the earthquake hit and had to take a detour to get home. The walk home was the distance between Sebring and Lake Placid. His daughters slept in the woods that night and arrived the following day.

"If you go there right now, believe me, you will cry," he said.

No one really knows how many people have died and Michel doesn't think they ever will.

"It made me feel hurt inside for all the people who died. I don't think anyone can count how many died," Michel said.

In his neighborhood the bodies of the victims were piled high. Michel saw a dump truck pick them up and take them away. He's struggling with nightmares of screaming people and collapsing buildings. He said sometimes he wakes up and feels it.

"I see it like if it happened right now ... nothing is going to be OK over there," he said.

On his last day in Port-au-Prince, aid had not arrived and people were sleeping outside. Groups of families and friends huddled up and shared the food and water they had.

"I felt sad to leave them but there's nothing I could do," Michel said.

During a Wednesday night church service at Highlands Gospel Tabernacle in Sebring, Michel's 17-year-old daughter, Dieucilene Michel, prayed for her father's safe return. He arrived via U.S Air Force on Monday, Jan. 18.

"There were no tears. I expected him to come home. I thought he may be injured, but I knew he was coming home," Dieucilene Michel said.