Pulitzer-winning photographer Patrick Farrell told of Haiti's horrors as no one else could

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Sunday, 04.26.09
Pulitzer-winning photographer Patrick Farrell told of Haiti's horrors as no one else could

There was a moment, while stalled in waist-high water on a central Haiti road amid Hurricane Ike last fall, when photographer Patrick Farrell and reporter Jacqueline Charles could feel their car drifting in the current and sliding toward a roiling canal.

'I thought, `This is going to be it,' '' said Patrick. ``Then something happened I've never seen before. I've never seen a fire truck in Haiti. But one came out of nowhere, pulled up behind us and pushed us out. We got the car going and kept moving.''

A couple of harrowing hours later, Patrick made it back to Port-au-Prince and began transmitting the year's most poignant and memorable news photos back to the newsroom and out to the rest of the world.

On Monday, his work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. It was a reminder of the sweeping impact a dedicated journalist can have and of the power of still photography in the frantic blur of a digital world.

If you haven't seen them, the photos are now posted on a special Web page located at www.MiamiHerald.com/1401. It includes a cross-section of the work that Patrick and Jacquie sent home over four trips to Haiti, facing a debilitating combination of poverty, hurricanes, flooding and malnutrition

Troubles on the island have become so familiar that routine news reports drew little notice for much of last year. With a growing economic storm of our own, this country seemed to lose interest in playing the supportive role it has over many years.

So Jacquie and Patrick were the only international journalists around when they set off at daybreak on Sept. 9 in the aftermath of the fourth storm in 30 days. They heard they should go to Cabaret, a tiny mountain village up the coast from Port-au-Prince.

Almost immediately, they found that the flooding in the countryside was more extensive than anyone knew, bridges were out and passage was nearly impossible.

They had to guess where the road was as water rose up to the hood of their SUV. The last part of the trip, they followed a local teenager guiding them by foot in water up to his chest.

They arrived to find a devastated village, with horrific scenes emerging as the water receded. In one place, they found the bodies of a dozen young children. Altogether, 70 people died in Cabaret alone, a third of them children.

''It was like a war zone,'' Jacquie said. ``People were walking around in a daze.''

'I kept thinking, `This just can't be,' '' said Patrick.

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