PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) – Somber Haitians gathered early Monday to remember the devastating January 2010 earthquake that killed relatives and neighbors while shattering much of the overcrowded capital and surrounding area in one of the worst natural disasters of modern times.
Hundreds of women in white dresses and men in slacks and dress shirts attended a Catholic Mass just after dawn at a new church built alongside the ruined National Cathedral, the towering remnants of broken walls still dominating the impoverished Bel Air neighborhood in downtown Port-au-Prince.
“This is the anniversary of the day I can never forget,” Gladys Lambard, who lost her husband and sister in the earthquake, said as she walked into the church arm-in-arm with her 14-year-old daughter. “The sadness of that day marked me forever.”
On the northern outskirts of Port-au-Prince, where authorities quickly buried thousands of people in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, President Michel Martelly and the first lady placed white flowers before a large chunk of rubble set on a concrete pedestal. The burial area is being developed as a memorial for those who lost their lives.
“The life of the people changed in 35 seconds that day,” Martelly said before a small audience of government officials, ambassadors and journalists. “But in the days that followed, solidarity came from everywhere.”