By Howard Koplowitz
Alexandra Cothia has left the tremors of Haiti, but the tremors have not left her.
Cothia, 25, the niece of Laurelton resident and Haitian-American Marie Sylvia Cothia, has been staying in Queens for two weeks.
“She came because of the tragedy. She came on board a military plane,” Marie Sylvia Cothia said. Her niece does not speak English.
Despite living in relative safety, the 25-year-old has not been able to shake off devastating images of the earthquake that killed at least 200,000 and left millions displaced.
“She’s traumatized,” Marie Sylvia Cothia said. “When she was riding the subway train for the first time, the train shaking felt like the tremors but worse. For a few days, she was shaken.”
Marie Sylvia Cothia said her niece, a lawyer in Port-au-Prince, was getting ready to leave her work building when the earthquake hit.
“The building was demolished in her presence,” she said. “She got out just in time.”
The Laurelton resident said she reached out to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) office for help in getting her other family members, including her sister, nieces and nephews, out of Haiti.
“They’re out on the streets” of Haiti, she said of her other family. “They’re should be no reason for them to suffer anymore.”
She said she was particularly concerned for her sister, a diabetic who is not receiving her medication.
“I’m trying to help to make sure my family is safe,” she said.
“I’m trying everything to get them out of there, but there’s red tape,” she said, explaining that the United States is concentrating on American citizens in Haiti as a priority.
Meanwhile, a Cambria Heights Haitian group is doing its part to help its homeland.
Elsie Saint-Louis Accillien, executive director of Haitian Americans United for Progress, at 221-05 Linden Blvd. in Cambria Heights, said the center has been flooded with calls on where to give donations, immigration issues and how to find loved ones back in Haiti.
HAUP is advising callers to donate to the Red Cross, UNICEF or Yele Haiti, a nonprofit founded by musician Wyclef Jean, but it is also collecting funds to benefit an orphanage for handicapped children and a school for 300 disadvantaged youth, both in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
Saint-Louis Accillien said HAUP has raised $3,000 for The House of Handicapped Children and Ecole Communautaire Desion.
“We’ve always been trying to help,” she said.
At Ecole Communautaire Desion, Saint-Louis Accillien said most of the children are accounted for but “that school is completely demolished after the earthquake.”
Saint-Louis Accillien said she decided HAUP would help the orphanage and school after she visited the institutions before the earthquake.
“I’ve visited, I’ve seen the work they do,” she said. “I know these people could use the support.”
HAUP has also been helping Haitian immigrants find family in the earthquake-torn Caribbean nation and has also fielded calls about adopting Haitian children and immigration issues.
Saint-Louis Accillien said the center recently helped a family locate their brother, who was trapped in a Port-au-Prince building. HAUP called the Red Cross with the location of the building and crews were able to rescue the brother, she said.
HAUP is also holding a fair Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Sacred Heart School at 115-50 221st St. in Cambria Heights.
Saint-Louis Accillien said the fair will be staffed with attorneys who will help those looking to adopt Haitian children and for Haitian immigrants who want to enroll their children in neighborhood schools.
She said the fair will also help raise funds for Haiti relief efforts.
Reach reporter Howard Koplowitz by e-mail at hkoplowitz@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4573.
