Retired U.S. Army communications specialist was in Haiti when quake hit

Haiti Quake Survivor: From Heaven to Hell and Back
Mary Winter
Copy Editor
Posted:
01/18/10
Filed Under:Woman Up, Haiti

Fernand Sajous starred this week in his own version of "The Road," a movie about a father-and-son's terrifying travels through a post-apocalyptic world. But two big differences: Sajous' hellish odyssey took place in Haiti, not Hollywood, and no scriptwriters were needed to beef up the story line.

Sajous, a 56-year-old retired U.S. Army communications specialist, was driving home from the airport in Port- au-Prince around 4:50 p.m. Tuesday when the crushing earthquake hit. The next 60 hours was a nightmarish, 200-mile road trip from the north side of the island to the south that he survived thanks to providence, luck, military training, his 2008 Isuzu pickup truck and his 9mm pistol.


"I just want to cry, but I can't even cry," Sajous told his daughter Thursday. In the previous 48 hours, he had pulled his mother from under the rubble of her home in a destroyed neighborhood in Port-au-Prince and had seen the quake's toll on his 45-year-old sister: a broken leg and a severe burn covering 60 percent of her face. Those traumas -- along with the astounding number of corpses and desperate people in the streets, the thugs Sajous had no doubt would kill him to get his truck, and the smell of decaying flesh -- shook Sajous to the core. He was exhausted and possibly in shock.


From Heaven to Hell and Back