Here’s a an excerpt from, “This Time It Was Personal,” a report from Garry Pierre-Pierre in Port-Au-Prince. He is founding editor of the Haitian Times, which is based in Brooklyn.

I have been covering my beloved homeland for about 20 years. The assignments have ranged from coup d’etats to elections to flooding , carnival and festivals.

Those were all assignments that had nothing to do with me or my family. Those who are left in Haiti do not dabble into politics nor the music scene. The floods, for the most part , have occurred in the Artibonite plateau and Central region, my kinfolks hail from the south of Haiti.

For the first time I was personally and deeply affected by the devastation brought on by this earthquake that shook this mountainous nation of roughly nine million people to its core.

No immediate family members died in the calamity, but many friends perished. They are too numerous to mention here, this column would not end. My story is not unique, it is the story of every Haitian. For years to come, Haitians would talk about Tuesday January 12 in the same way they remember January 1, our independence from France, for different reasons obviously.