From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is a daily.

Weeks after the assassination of its president, Haiti was struck by a major earthquake.

My colleague, Maria Abihabi, was there reporting on the first crisis when the second crisis hit.

It's Wednesday, August 18th.

Maria, where were you when this all started last weekend?

So on Saturday morning, I'm in my hotel room in Porto-Parente, Haiti, face timing with my husband and our two children.

I've been on assignment and out of the house for about a week at this point.

All of a sudden, I feel the entire room just jolt to the left and then jolt to the right.

My husband could see the alarm on my face and he said, you know, what's going on?

I said, I think that there's an earthquake. He said, you need to get out right now.

So with my phone in my hand and my kid's storm video call, I ran out to the parking lot of my hotel and I discovered all the hotel staff and security guards.

The guests that are staying at the hotel in their pajamas and everybody is looking for some sort of open sky so that they can make sure that building or trees don't fall down on them.

And I immediately recognized that everybody was just thinking, please God, let this be over. Let this just be it.

Shortly after my Haitian colleague, Andre, called me to see if I was okay.

And after establishing that I'm fine and he and his family are fine, we then start talking about where is the epicenter and he eventually tracks it down and reveals that the epicenter isn't the Southern peninsula, about 85 miles west of quarter prints for capital.

And at that point, we start trying to figure out a way to get there. Can we take the roads? No, because they're controlled by gangs that are kidnapping people for ransom.

Can we take commercial flights? No, because they've been stopped. And then we kind of figure out that the best way to get there is by hiring a helicopter.

And we were able to get there pretty much 24 hours right after the quake struck. And what do you find when you get to this other peninsula?

Get out of this helicopter on the ground.

Complete and utter mayhem. You get on to the tarmac and literally I walk maybe 50 feet and just immediately there are two people with injuries both on wheelchairs that are being.

Taken on to the helicopter that I just arrived on so that they can be shuttle to port of prints for emergency care.

And then as I'm just about to exit the gates of the airport for Lecci, which is where the earthquake struck next to a pickup truck pulls up and there's a woman in a pink dress lying in the bed of the pickup truck.

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