The Story
William and Mary Students Survive Haitian Earthquake
William and Mary student Danny Yates (’13), graduate student Landon Yarrington (M.A. ’09, Ph.D. ’15) and Jonna Knappenberger (’09), former co-Editor in Chief of The DoG Street Journal, are safe and unharmed after being caught in the massive earthquake which decimated Haiti on Tuesday.
Knappenberger and Yarrington traveled to Haiti in late December to visit friends and conduct independent research related to their anthropology degrees. She was standing in the street of the Delmas 17 neighborhood of Port-au-Prince while talking to some friends as the earthquake struck.
While she notes that she emerged physically unscathed, the experiences she faced left her literally shaking for days. “I can’t tell if it’s the earth or me,” Knappenberger wrote of the experience.
Knappenberger was fortunate enough to be a few blocks from the home she was staying at when the earthquake hit on Tuesday. The home and all of their possessions were destroyed, save for two cameras and a notebook. Later that day, Yarrington tried to organize the Delmas 17/Rue Verna neighborhood to organize the injured and wounded to one safe spot. There were over 200 people in the location he created by the time he left that night, and many more amassed on the streets. Knappenberger was able to get to the area of Minustah in order to let the authorities know where Yarrington and his safe spot were before she attempted to leave the country.
While trying to get home, Knappenberger suffered the confusion of conflicting reports, missing identification, and the false report of an imminent tsunami, which nearly caused a panic.
“We are being told a number of different things” while trying to leave Haitian soil, Knappenberger said before coming home on Thursday. “We are being told [that] the Marines and Red Cross are coming and ‘we'll know when they get here’ and we might or might not be able to leave with them without passports. We are also being told that if the UN higher officials find out we're on base without appropriate IDs we might get kicked off. So, our situation is precarious.”
Fortunately, Knappenberger and Yarrington were reunited and were back on American soil by mid-afternoon on Thursday.
As of late Thursday night, Danny Yates is still on Haitian soil. Yates was part of a five-person team from the Richmond-based Joint Haiti Committee from St. Bridget Catholic Church and the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. The group was in Haiti to check on the missions located there. At the time of the earthquake, they were staying in Hinche, about 50 miles from the capital of Port-au-Prince. Yates has been in contact with his parents, who report that he and his group are safe.
"We are very thankful that they are safe and were not physically injured in this very sad and tragic event," said Director of University Relations Brian Whitson. "It is hard to imagine what they have been through."
The DSJ will continue to update this story as events unfold.