By PopEater Staff
‘Heroes’ Star Jimmy-Jean Louis traveled to see his parents after the earthquake ripped apart their homeland of Haiti, and told RadarOnline.com that he was glad to see his family safe but was having a hard time coping with the tragedy. “It’s the most horrific picture I have ever seen,” Louis shared. “Something I wouldn’t wish anyone would ever see, it’s so graphic. The bodies in the streets become like a piece of garbage, the way they treat them.”
“It was nice and it was peaceful to see my parents because we already had comes to terms that I was coming,” explained the actor, who said he initially feared his family was dead. “It was just this amazing relief to see each other. It was calm and very emotional but nice to be able to see them and hug them – a genuine simple hug. That was great.”
Haiti was devastated last week by an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the moment magnitude scale – the greatest magnitude of any earthquake in 200 years. Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has said that over 70,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves, and Louis confirmed that the reality of the destruction is overwhelming.
“From going around the neighborhood, from where we are, everyday, many times a day, I don’t know how many times they come and they bring dead bodies just to burn them, just to burn,” he said.
“You see them being burned, you smell them. It’s the most horrific picture I have ever seen. Something I wouldn’t wish anyone would ever see, it’s so graphic … As you go around the city you smell that smell, you know exactly how the human body smells because it becomes natural to you. The same way you could recognize the smell of a flower. Now people can recognize the smell of a human body. It is absolutely disgusting.”
The actor added, “It is so terrible what has happened to Haiti. “I think people still have no idea even with all the pictures you see, even with all the videos you see, you still have no idea of how bad it is. You really don’t. It is extremely, extremely bad .. What I have noticed is that so far everyone is just reporting from Port-Au-Prince, from the capital, and it revolves around the capital, but then you realize that the same earthquake went miles and miles and miles around to hit three, four, five other big cities. It’s just that people can’t make it yet to the next city.”
Louis was born in Petionville, Haiti, but moved to Paris when he was 12 to pursue a modeling career. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1998. His parents and extended family reside in Haiti.
“Some of my family are doing OK,” Louis said. “Some of them are not doing OK. But at the end of the day you look around and everybody is in the same place, everybody cares about everybody else as well as their own families.”
