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CNN Larry King Live

Stories From Haiti

Aired January 23, 2010 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LARRY KING, CNN HOST (voice-over): An earthquake ravages Haiti. Three million of its people desperate for food and water and nowhere to go.

No one to help them, each with a story.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It took us four hours to get to him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are still hearing voices in the rubble.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are people dying.

KING: Stories from Haiti, next on a special edition of LARRY KING LIVE.

(SINGING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It has little infrastructure to begin with, and was left with practically nothing after the quake. Yet somehow, some way, people managed to survive. Their amazing stories are going to be hard to forget.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: There - there are so many incredible moments that - that, you know, I'll never forget.

The - the first morning we were here, right after the earthquake, Wednesday morning, as soon as we got here, we went out, and just walking down the street came upon a number of family members and neighbors who were trying to rescue this little girl named Bea (ph), who was - was pinned under the rubble. All you - we could see were - were her feet.

And - and they had been working for - for, you know, all that morning, trying to free her. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: She's clearly alive. You can see (INAUDIBLE) crying out. You can see two of her feet at this time. They've been able to...

(CROSSTALK)

(SPEAKING IN FRENCH)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: They were just this handful of guys, just working in - under the hot sun, literally digging through the rubble the rubble with their hands. And, you know, you could hear Bea crying out in pain. You could hear her screams.

And then the - the miracle of having her pulled out alive. I mean, we kind of didn't know what to expect; we didn't know how this was going to go on. And it was probably - we were probably there about half an hour, 45 minutes, and then they would - they figured out a way to move some things and - and chip away at some things, and they pulled her out. She was alive, and she was OK.

I'll just never forget that amazing feeling of everybody - of suddenly Bea being free and everybody on the street just stopping and applauding and just being stunned and so happy for her. Even amidst this tragedy and this death, people banded together and, you know, did what they could. And - and went - went beyond what they could. I mean, they - they did what they didn't have to do, and they did it with their band heads and with whatever tools they could find. They freed this little girl. They saved this girl's life.

The other moment I - I won't forget is - is we were in - we were sort of caught in a - in a melee of - of looters, people who had broken into a -- a store and were stealing candles.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: It quickly started getting out of control. Young guys started arriving with weapons. They had knives. They had screwdrivers. They had, you know, pieces of wood that they had grabbed, pieces of debris, some broken bottles. And - and the strong would take from the weak, and - and somebody would - would get a - a sack of candles, and then some - like, a group, of four young men would descend on that guy, and - and start attacking him in order to steal that bag of candles.

And - and I just remember seeing out of the corner of my eye, a - a - a piece of cement or a rock being thrown from on top of the building and to hit a little boy in the crowd, and all of a sudden everyone kind of ran away from him. And I - there had been more rocks being thrown at the looters on the roof. And this little boy tried to get up, and then collapsed back down again. And blood was just pouring from his head, and I - and I just grabbed him and ran.

And I - I remember could feel the - I could feel his blood on me. I could feel on my arm; I could feel it on my back. And - and - and it was warm. And - and then I set him down, and he was totally stunned. He had no idea sort of he where he were - where he was, and what he was doing.

(CROSSTALK) COOPER: You know, he didn't - he was clearly just - he had had a head wound. And I - I just sort of - I didn't know what to do. I had never done anything like this before, and there was no - I looked around, and there was no one around.

And so I just picked him up again and put him over this barricade that - that had - someone had been built, and someone else took him, and - and I think gave him a - a towel for his head, and then someone else just carried him away through the crowd, and I never saw him again. I don't know even who he was or what his name is or - or - or what happened to him.

But I keep thinking about him. I keep thinking about that moment.

The scene in the cemetery is, again, one of those - those things I - I - I will never forget. I think it was - it was Thursday, two days after the quake. And, you know, you would see people wheeling bodies through the streets on wheelbarrows. And we just happened to drive by as somebody was wheeling a coffin through the street.

And, you know - and we got out, we started talking with them, we followed them through the cemetery. And at the cemetery, they were opening up old crypts, and just shoving as many bodies into the crypts as possible. And there was literally a mound of - a pile of - of humans, a pile of - of remains of people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: We were just brought to the - the cemetery, literally piled into mounds. There's probably about 20 or so people here, many of them small children. Cemetery workers here are saying they're - they're doing the best they can, they're trying to give dignity to - to as many people as possible, but they're simply overwhelmed at this point.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: They would literally just grab a body, drag it, and - and toss it into a crypt. And - I mean, I've - I've been to a lot of places, I've never seen, you know, bodies handled like that, and - and old graves being opened up, and people being put in.

And - and then we've, you know, discovered mass graves the next day. And, you know, it's just - in those early days, you - you kind of thought you had seen it all. And then, you know, a new hour would come, and you would be somewhere else and you would see something else that - that, you know - that you never even thought possible.

There are these moments that - these moments that kind of give you hope, and there are these moments that remind you that - that the Haitian people are strong. And I know it sounds like a cliche, but they really are. I mean, they - generations of Haitians have been through things that - that - that people can't imagine. I mean, dictators and - and governments that are just based on stealing and corruption and - and killings in the night and brutality and - and just things which are incredibly unfair. And - and so there are - there has been suffering for a long time in Haiti among generations of - of people. And they - they bear it, and they bear it with dignity and with strength and with resilience. And all those words often, you know, become cliches, but they're all true here.

And we - we were driving down a street and came upon a - a woman who was just sitting there singing. And there were several of her family members and her friends around, and they were - they had been sleeping, some of them, on that corner. And they were just singing a song, a religious song. And we stopped and we got out our camera and we started taping them, and - and she started dancing.

And it was just - you know, it was just a brief little moment, it was just a - a one - one scene happening one street.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SINGING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: It made me hopeful. And I think it gave the people who were singing strength. And it just - it was a sign to me of - of strength, a sign of - of resilience, in spite of the fact they're living on the street, in spite of the fact they don't know what the next day is going to bring.

You know, there is faith and there is strength and there is hope. And you see that - you know, you see that everywhere you go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SINGING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Make no mistake, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. I'm outside this pediatric hospital, and just take a look inside.

(MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Death and disease are not new to the people of Haiti, but the earthquake was a catastrophe that no one, no matter what their circumstances, was prepared to deal with in any way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: Well, I remember when we landed in Port-au-Prince, some of our first thoughts were, we didn't see the devastation initially. We were driving along, and a lot of the buildings we saw were actually OK, it seemed.

Then, all of a sudden, you turn to this one neighborhood, and it seems like the entire neighborhood was flattened. Building after building, down. Rubble in the streets. It was impossible to pass. People out in the streets still very stunned by what had happened.

And I think it was - somebody in the car suddenly said, 'Look over there.' And I said, 'What is it?' And they said, 'There are bodies everywhere.'

And I remember my eyes sort of looking right over the bodies, because I couldn't process, I think, what I was seeing, at least not instantaneously.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: That's a dead body right here. They're - and then if you look over here, it just gets even worse than maybe you can possibly imagine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: And sure enough, there was just body after body after body, at least 25 that we counted in a line, simply outside this building. It was a - and it was a building that was completely destroyed right next to it. There was bodies likely that came out of that building. It was - it was just really hard to imagine all these dead bodies in the streets.

One of the images that I think I don't want to try and remember, but can't forget either, is this guy carrying two babies, literally walking outside, sort of carrying them in his arms, just back and forth, and then taking these bodies and literally tossing them into this bulldozer. Took these bodies and tossed them into a bulldozer. And then the bulldozer lifted up and dumped these bodies into a dump truck.

Just like that. Like garbage, these bodies being treated.

I - I remember seeing these teenaged kids climbing up the side of that dump truck, sort of sifting through the bodies and looking for a loved one, apparently. And they - I don't know if they'd be able to find that loved one.

These people were not identified before they were sent to these crypts in the ground. They just vanished. They just vanished, literally, off the face of the planet.

One night we were covering a story that we though was a - a story of things starting to recover. It was these field hospitals, having been set up outside a hospital that really wasn't functioning very well, and these doctors were starting to take care of patients who otherwise weren't getting care. They were performing operations, giving them medicines.

And early evening, we started to get murmurs these doctors were going to leave, and leave all these patients behind. And I remember thinking to myself, 'That can't possibly happen. Doctors, nurses, health-care professionals, they would never do that.'

But sure enough, later on that night, the U.N. trucks came in, these doctors all got onboard those U.N. trucks and they left, leaving my crew, myself, to basically be frustrated, be confused by what happened, and then to stay and take care of these patients.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Ambulance (ph) is now pulling in. They have nowhere to go. This is it. And, frankly, I am it right now, because there - there are no doctors or other nurses here, trying to tell them that we are completely - we're left in a lurch here. We really just don't have the supplies to take care of the patients.

It's one of the most frustrating things I think I've ever been involved with. And - and I feel really, really helpless. We're going to see what we can do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: All the patients did well that night, but it was one of the most frustrating things that I think I've ever seen. Literally, throughout the course of the night, my faith in humanity was completely trashed, and then restored by the - by the hard work of my crew and the people who decided to help out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sometimes you have just have to be (INAUDIBLE) to keep them warm and the rest, God can take it from there.

GUPTA: We've been talking night after night about the fact that there is so much aid in the city, so many supplies, medical supplies, antibiotics, pain medications, things that can help people right now, but those things are stuck at their airport. They're not getting to people who need it the most.

We decided to actually go to the airport and look and see if the supplies -- were and - and why it was taking so long to get them out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: ...see here, just take a look. I mean, boxes and boxes of supplies, all kinds of different formula in there. There's antibiotics, pain medications. There's all sorts of different things.

(INAUDIBLE) supplies out. Can you help us?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: What was sort of striking to us is that we were able to go into the airports, tell people what was going on on the other side of the wall of the airport, in the city, and within 15, 20 minutes, walk out with bags of supplies, antibiotics, pain medications, things that could help people right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: We were able to basically walk into a couple of these tents, tell people what we needed and get lots of supplies here, lots of antibiotics, lots of pain medications, all sorts of things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: And I was reminded of what people have told me in situations like this, that you got to put medicine in front of guns. You got to make sure that people get care. Because if you take care of people, they're not as likely to be as desperate. And their security concerns will go down as well.

I was actually walking into a hospital with this bag of supplies, showing that it could be done. And I think it was an important point, that hopefully can be emblematic of getting more of those supplies out to people who need it the most.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Hopefully, you can - hope we can...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: One of the images that I - I think that I will remember, and was a good image of what I saw here in Port-au-Prince, was driving along the road one day and seeing that there was a water station set up, one of the few water stations at that time. And it was this hot, blazing sunny day, and there was person after person, hundreds of people just lined up to get that water.

And here's what I noticed: They were all quiet. There was no pushing. There was no shoving. There was no armed guards. These people needed one of the most basic commodities that the human body craves, and yet they were - they were perfectly - they were just civil to one another. They were respectful to one another. And I think in many ways, they were reflective of the Haitian spirit that hopefully will carry this country forward.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back to "Stories From Haiti."

The need for food, water and medicine created a desperate situation in Haiti. There were legitimate fears about safety and security that saw our people in difficult and dangerous spots.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Tonight, Karl Penhaul witnessed a desperate act that had deadly consequences.

We warn you, some of the images in this report are disturbing -- Karl.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, indeed, Larry.

We were driving just beyond the airport this -- this -- this day. And as we drove by, we saw -- or we heard a single shot ring out. That got our attention.

We looked across. And at that point, we saw two Haitian police officers holding two detained young men. And at that point, as we spotted them, more shots rang out. And we saw those police officers shoot their young detainees at point-blank range.

In the process of stopping the car, we ran out to see what is happening. And on the ground, one of these men was gasping his last breaths. There was another man who was badly wounded. And -- and the police evidently thought that they had been stealing bags of rice. The wounded man denied it. And the witnesses nearby said no such thing had occurred -- Larry.

KING: God. (END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PENHAUL: I'm Karl Penhaul in Port-au-Prince.

It's difficult, really, to talk about memories here from Haiti, from this disaster. There's so much information, so many sights and sounds, it's really an emotional overhaul.

What I'm left with more are impressions. This - this for example, people leaving the capital of Port-au-Prince. They've lost everything here. They've lost their homes, they've lost family, they've lost friends. And they're heading out into the countryside.

And if you take a look, what does that really mean to lose everything? You've got a man like this man. All he has left in the world he's carrying in his head, a - a paper bag from the phone company, a Dora the Explorer canvas bag and another blue bag held together by a piece of packing tape.

The future for these people is uncertain, and our problem is, the (INAUDIBLE) we have memories, I just wonder how long our memory will last if we remember these people six months down the line or one year down the line, two years down the line and how long will it really take for life to get better for these people.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the baby who's going to a hospital in Miami. They're hoping to save her. She's got broken ribs. They fear that she'll die soon if she stays here, but they also fear that she may not be able to withstand this flight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Of all the moving stories about the earthquake's victims, the most poignant may be about Haiti's children. Some are now without parents; others need ongoing medical help. And a lucky few are flown to adoptive parents waiting for them in the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN (voice-over): This is the Maison des Enfants de Dieu, an orphanage called the House of God's Children.

But the house is empty. One hundred thirty-five children eat, sleep, wash and play outside.

(on camera): You silly goose. Did you take my pen?

(on camera): I think one of the hardest things to be an eyewitness to is the orphans, and to really understand the severe orphan issue in this country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FRENCH)

UNIDENTIFIEF FEMALE: (SPEAKING IN FRENCH)

O'BRIEN: When you saw twenty-five babies in the back of a truck, laid out, when we - when we opened the - when we looked through the door, I - I gasped. It was so shocking, so hard to be a mother of four children and see that, and to see babies with diarrhea, babies who literally need to be picked up and taken to hospital. And they're - they're - they're not going because they can barely get them formula.

That's - that's been really, really hard.

And yet at the same time, someone said to me, you know, the story of the boy and the starfish. There's a lot of starfish. You know, is it - is it worthless to try to - to try to help one at a time. And the answer is, it's not. And if you can help in any way, then helping one person or five people or a hundred people or a thousand people is a good start.

But to see that and not be able to help every orphan in this country - and their mothers, frankly. And their fathers. And the country. And, you know, where do you stop? And it's really - that part, I think, is really hard. That's hard.

(BGEIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Soledad, what's the latest from there?

O'BRIEN: Well, this is the back of the truck. Twenty-five babies are here, and it's really become this makeshift nursery. Across the way, another hundred-plus other young children.

Here's the problem, Larry - let me show you that - that people are donating things like powdered milk. But of course, infants can't drink milk; they have to drink formula. But they've run out of formula. So they're feeding them milk. That gives the babies diarrhea, which mean they get dehydrated.

So it's really urgent, the things like water and formula have to come to orphanages. And there are so many orphanages here in Port-au- Prince, it's really, really critical. So if you want to think of something to donate, formula is a really good and important thing to get for everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Volunteers here are snaking through a hose right now to give her some drinking water. She's about 10 feet away, and you can see the braids of this little girl's hair.

I talked with her. She's wearing glasses, and she's crying. She's in a lot of pain right now and she's terribly scared.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: Hundreds of thousands of people's lives were impacted by this earthquake. But on my second day in Haiti, I met an 11-year-old girl who I will never forget.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON (voice-over): She was the pride of her family, Anika San Luie (ph), an 11-year-old who sang in the choir at church and at school.

Classmates nicknamed her "the little lawyer," because she hoped to study law one day, just like the aunt who raised here.

Those dreams were shattered last Tuesday on the day the earth shook Port-au-Prince.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: She was terrified and in a great deal of pain. I met her. I told her my name. She told me hers. We gave her some water, and we gave her a granola bar.

Later, we learned that she had finally escaped her trap after 48 hours. But she did not survive her terrible injuries, in part because there weren't enough doctors to treat her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(voice-over): Friday night, relatives held a funeral in a church, and then buried little Anika in this cemetery. Her mother is visiting for the very first time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING IN FRENCH) WATSON; Anika's uncle says the 11-year-old displayed strength throughout the ordeal. Before she died, he says she was willing to have her crushed leg amputated.

(on camera): What did she say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She said me (ph), 'Thank you, God, because he saved my life. If I lose my feet, but I thank God (ph) I have - I'll always have life. Every time I feel - I got some cheese in my hands, so - for which to spend...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: I will always wonder why this girl had to suffer so much before she died. And I will always ask myself whether there was something more we could have done to help her live.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: How do you deal with this?

WATSON: It's not - it's not easy. It's - I don't think it's any - easy for anybody here, and if you can just imagine what it's like for the millions of people here in Port-au-Prince to endure this, losing, in a span of a few seconds, entire families, homes, everything, it's - it's really hard to - to comprehend what the people behind me and in this city are dealing with right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back to "Stories from Haiti." Tens of thousands of Americans lived in Haiti and some just happened to be there when the earthquake struck. Loved ones watched from afar, wondering what happened to my mother, my daughter, my wife.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fires burn in the streets, clouds of dust cover everything. Even in the best of times, this neighborhood in Port-au-Prince is considered by locals as one of its worst, it's Bel-Air.

(on-camera): As you walk through the streets of Bel-Air, one of the things you may notice is a lot of the people have a white substance above their upper lip. What that is? It's toothpaste, and what the people are doing is, a rumor has spread through the community that if you put toothpaste there, it will not only protect you from the smell, the growing smells here in the area, but it will also protect you from the dangerous substances in the air as well.

CARROLL (voice-over): Owens Mercy (ph) lives in Bel-Air. He and others here wonder if their neighborhood's reputation of violence and drugs means they'll be last on the list to receive aid.

UNKNOWN MALE: No clothes, no food, no water, nothing at all. We're suffering.

UNKNOWN MALE: It's like, you know, people just look at Bel-Air and see those people, because they're poor, and they are bandits, but today we're not bandits. There are no bandits. We are people dying here. We are people dying.

CARROLL: You know, when I think about my time here, you obviously think about all of the horrible images that you've seen while being here. But what I always try to do is I try to look for that one bright spot, and for me, that came from the form on an e-mail from Sachiel Mondesir before I even left. He sent me an e-mail that basically said, I'm trying to find my father. I don't know if he's alive or if he's dead. I'm going to send you his picture. I'm going to send you his address. If you have any time at all, please look for him and just let me know that he's OK.

Mondesir tried everything, but communications were down. The U.S. embassy, out of reach.

SACHIEL MONDESIR, FATHER IN HAITI: It was a sense of, you know, helplessness, where you can't do anything for the person that you love. So I just -- I didn't know what to do.

CARROLL: So Mondesir took a chance and sent an e-mail to CNN asking for help.

And I took that information and I carried it around. In fact, I still have the e-mail and his picture right here on my BlackBerry. And at one moment, we had some time, and we had some time and we went to this neighborhood called Delma 24 (ph). I walked around with my BlackBerry showing the picture, talking about this man. And we eventually found him.

(on camera): That's him! Hi. How are you? How are you? We've been looking for you. It's so good to see you.

There are a lot of people back in the United States who are looking for you, your son.

JEAN SERRIER (ph) MONDESIR: OK, OK.

CARROLL: Yes. Yes, how are you? How are you doing?

JS MONDESIR: I'm all right.

CARROLL: Yes?

JS MONDESIR: I'm all right.

CARROLL: This is how we found you. This is a picture. This is you.

JS MONDESIR: Yes, that's me.

CARROLL: That's you, yes?

JS MONDESIR: That's me.

CARROLL: Word had gotten out in the neighborhood and word had gotten to him. His name is Jean Serrier Mondesir and word had gotten to Jean Serrier that we were looking for him. And the minute he found us, he walked up to me and he threw his arms around me and hugged me and said thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you so very much for finding me. And we had a satellite phone and I got my producer, we got this man on the phone with his son and it was just -- for us, it was a beautiful moment and I think it was obviously a very happy moment for him.

JS MONDESIR: OK, I'm fine. OK, I'm fine. Everything OK with me, OK?

CARROLL (on camera): What was it like to finally hear your son's voice? How was that for you? Nice?

JS MONDESIR: Sachiel?

CARROLL: Yes.

JS MONDESIR: Oh, very nice. Very nice for me. Very nice for me. He's my last son.

CARROLL (voice-over): More than 1,000 miles away, a grateful and relieved son.

S. MONDESIR: It's almost like a dream that, you know, we haven't heard from him. So to speak to him now again, you know, it's, you know, it's hard to even explain the emotions, but I was extremely happy.

CARROLL: And out of all of this misery and out of all this destruction, to be able to do that for this one family, I think for me, was my most memorable moment.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What I'll never forget in my entire life is landing at the Port-au-Prince Airport to immediately driving downtown and every street seeing bodies lying on the side of the street. In some cases, piles of bodies. And watching the people that survived the earthquake passing the bodies by looking sad and forlorned and watching small children with their parents crying as they passed the bodies and trying to imagine the horror these little children were going through, not possibly understanding what they were looking at. One particular day, we were stuck in traffic and there was an intense amount of traffic obviously because of people trying to pick up supplies and blockades on the roads. But this particular blockade is something I'll never forget. It was because bodies were in the street. The drivers are trying to avoid running over the bodies and that's what was tying up traffic.

This building was a government-run senior citizen home in Port-au- Prince. There were 80 men and women lived here. Six were killed in the earthquake. The other 74 survived. But now watching how they survive is very difficult. What will also always stay in my mind is a nursing home we visited. The nursing home was destroyed. Six residents of the nursing home were killed, 64 survived. The 64 are now living outside. They are living without any food or water with one doctor who showed up almost a week later who has almost no equipment and many of them are very ill. Many of them have dementia. You saw them in diapers that weren't changed. We saw many of them without pants on. And it was such a pitiful situation because there are absolutely no plans whatsoever for these people. Sixty-four old people who live in nursing home who were indigent to begin with, it was a government-run nursing home and now live outside on soiled mattresses with bugs crawling over them with no plans whatsoever for their welfare. It's something I'll never forget.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: A strong earthquake has hit Haiti in the Caribbean. At least one hospital has collapsed. People are screaming for help.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are just now beginning to learn the extent of the devastation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people died. There's a lot of people are suffering. My country is in great difficult. But I'm very happy to see how the world is with us, is helping us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It's easy to see how Haitians might have wondered if anyone heard their cries, if anyone was going to help them. Well, the world was listening and responded.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One thing that really stands out to me is when we tagged along with the World Food Programme when they were handing out these high energy biscuits and these water purification tablets. And we get down to the area where they're going to hand out all this stuff. And for a while, it was a little bit orderly. And then you just -- people started just pushing, pushing and shoving. A lot of people starting to push and shove their way, trying to get up to where the food is. And before a couple seconds went by, you are seeing women getting pushed out of the way. People are reaching into the truck, grabbing it out of the truck. The people in the truck now had to pull the flaps down. They were trying to hand it out through the flap.

Even after that, they were reaching in and just a few people, the majority of people were fine. But just a few people got completely out of hand and what I noticed was the strong taking from the weak. That people would snatch something out of the hands of someone who was weaker. That women and small children were getting pushed to the back and weren't getting anything. It was very, very frustrating. I have to give credit in one way to the U.N. guards. Perhaps they could have done more to stop the crowd, but they didn't overreact. It was just pushing. It was taking. But there was no real violence. And I think it would have been very easy for them to come in and start beating on people or firing shots and who knows. Things could have gotten out of hand. But it was sad.

We were right there in the middle of it to see this truck couldn't take it any more and go barreling down the street with what I know was a half a truck full of supplies and looking around at all these people who ended up getting nothing because a few people just caused the crowd to get out of hand.

The other thing that really stood out to me is when we were driving back from the story. We were doing a story on delivering aide and all of the sudden, this paramedic comes running out in front of us and flagging us down saying, stop, stop. We need your truck. We need your truck. Turns out they had just pulled a 23-year-old woman, a college student out of the rubble and they only had one truck. The truck had to stay to look for other survivors. And he needed our flatbed pickup truck.

So it was like, of course, of course. We're putting her in our truck right now. The paramedic loads her in the truck and we go barreling down the road trying to get her to the hospital. Our driver is now the ambulance driver, so to speak. And the paramedic is in the flatbed truck. He has got one hand on an IV. He's got the other hand checking her pulse. He's trying to comfort her. And it was just amazing to watch him work. And we went to one United Nations hospital. More like a triage kind of center. They put her on the ground. They started working on her looking at her injuries, trying to figure out what was wrong. But this was clearly short term. I mean, she's laying there on the sidewalk. And we think it's over. And they were like, no, we need your truck again. She needs to go to a proper hospital. We don't have the facilities here to really treat her. So we load her back in the pickup.

It was amazing to see them work, standing up in the back of this pickup. And I just think nothing was better than when we pulled up at that last hospital and it's nighttime now and they take her in and her name was Maxie (ph). And she was conscious and talking. And she said she was Catholic. She said she has prayed every day that she never gave up hope. She had her faith that she would be rescued. And the doctors were telling us, well, we don't even barely understand this. Six days, no food, no water. And to see her and to see what they do up close and personal was -- it was pretty amazing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Seal offered a musical message of hope to the people of Haiti. Here he is lifting up all of us with "People Get Ready."

SEAL, SINGER: (SINGING)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Musicians are doing what they can to help. Haitians, a number of prominent performers are behind an effort called Download to Donate for Haiti. Among them, Peter Gabriel. To hear more songs from more artists, go to musicforrelief.org. And now here's Peter Gabriel with "Heroes."

PETER GABRIEL, SINGER: (SINGING)

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