Thank goodness for slow traffic in port au prince.
Following my training class, I was on my way back to the Hotel Montana with my driver, Fanel Antoine. Because I had stayed at the bank a little later than usual, he was trying to deliver me as fast as he could, but to no avail. A large truck in front of us was lumbering up the steep, winding hill to the hotel, blocking our way. We were finally seconds away from the hotel when our whole world started to shake. The car rocked back and forth. A tall retaining wall crumbled right before our eyes, onto the truck ahead.

The hillside and the roadway collapsed behind us, but the car was untouched. The violent shaking lasted about 30 seconds. Having experienced a couple of earthquakes, I knew pretty much right away that we needed to get out of the car, into the open and certainly away from what remained of the retaining wall. The road was blocked in both directions, so Fanel and I decided to walk the last 200 yards to the hotel. Fanel didn’t speak English and I don’t speak French, but we managed to communicate with expressions and a few common words.

The Hotel Montana was touted as a four-star hotel near Petionville, a Port au Prince suburb. It was the premier place to stay and be seen in Haiti, a secure and stable refuge from the reality of the rest of the city. But when we got to the hotel site, it was no longer standing. All six stories had collapsed on top of one another like a stack of pancakes. Nearly 300 people died in the hotel’s rubble. If Fanel had gotten me to the hotel two minutes earlier, I would have been crushed under tons of concrete along with everyone else who was in the building. The survivors were shouting, crying and screaming, and the scene was chaos.

I tried to call my wife, but the cell service went down almost immediately and stayed offline for days. I recognized a bartender and a couple of waiters that I had befriended. They were a little bloodied, but said they were okay. The shopping area, restaurant, bar and parking garage had all collapsed. I heard shouts from under the debris in the parking garage and the hotel, but there was no way to get to the people underneath. It was the most horrible, helpless feeling I had ever experienced

• TUESDAY JAN. 12, 5:30 P.M.

  Fanel insisted that our only alternative was to walk the six, hilly miles back to the bank in downtown Port au Prince. By that point it was getting dark. This was not a strategy I would have considered even 45 minutes earlier. The pathways of Port au Prince could be mean streets, especially at night, and I was a pretty conspicuous target in a Haitian crowd. Taking stock, I had with me my messenger bag with my passport, laptop, cell phone,

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