Jan 24, 2010 / 11:50 am
Patrick O'Malley, 72, of River Falls, Wisconsin returned home Jan. 15 after surviving Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake. O'Malley was in a taxi cab en route to his hotel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti when the earthquake hit; causing the airport control tower behind him to collapse in a cloud of dust. A retired American Airlines pilot, O’Malley has been visiting Haiti since 1992 and has helped raise money to build a village outside Port-au-Prince.
He arrived in Haiti at 4 p.m. Jan. 12 to avoid paying a fine on a vehicle, and the earthquake struck at 4:53 p.m.; the epicenter was less than two miles from where O'Malley was standing.
"It felt like the wheels were coming off the pickup (truck)," said O'Malley. "I thought it was an airplane crash or a riot."
O’Malley said the devastation and loss of life he witnessed over the next two days was unimaginable. As he made his way on foot to his hotel from where his taxi stopped, O’Malley said thousands of Haitians were suddenly in the street amongst the rubble. As he walked, he accidentally stepped on the body of a small boy buried underneath a collapsed building.