"On a typical day you're going to find caddies playing with members. It's not some snobby, elitist golf course."

Nice work by Farrell Evans to track down Bill Evans, the 62-year-old American GM of Petionville Club, a nine-holer on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince that has since become a refugee camp for earthquake victims.

When the earthquake started at 4:53 p.m. last Tuesday, Evans was walking through a grove of lime trees on the club's grounds in a spot overlooking the city to the north. (They grow their own limes because the fruit is too expensive in the open market.) The grounds crew was gone for the day, so Evans was alone on the grounds. He has vivid memories of that terrifying moment.

"I was thrown to the ground with this three-dimensional screeching noise," he said. "I couldn't get up but I was situated in such a way that I was watching the city. It was like in slow motion. One of the buildings that I could see just popped like a firecracker and the ground smoke came out. But the reality is that it was a six-story building disintegrating. One after another I saw buildings disintegrating. Poof! Poof! Poof! Then the intensity of the tremors got worse. Then a cloud of dust went over everything. I couldn't see the city now. It was like this mushroom cloud. It made me think of the clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I couldn't see my hands in front of me."