BY JONATHAN M. KATZ

Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- They kept the books, had the training and fixed the computers. They were the educated few of Haiti, an up-and-coming generation of nurses, technicians, office managers and college students.

Now they're gone -- just when their struggling country needs them most.

The Jan. 12 earthquake struck just before 5 p.m., destroying office buildings and disproportionately killing the young professionals who were going the extra mile to make Haiti work. Many were crushed at their desks.

"It is a generation that decided not to leave the country. They chose to work for the country," said Dieusibon Pierre-Merite, a Haitian sociologist with a United Nations anti-gang program that lost several staffers in the quake. "They are the ones who died."

Compounding the loss is a quickening brain drain, as people with the ability and means to leave abandon a ravaged country where more than 1.2 million people have lost their homes.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated Press he has watched with dismay as educated youths board planes to the United States and elsewhere. They leave because Haiti, always a difficult place to live, became impossible after the quake.

"I was looking at their faces: They were escaping a country and they had no intention to go back," Bellerive said. "I feel love for the people that have lost family ... but I believe it's even harder for the country to see living people that could do so much to rebuild Haiti, leaving Haiti."

Haiti has gone through such losses of talent before, usually in times of political upheaval. Many fled or were killed under the father-and-son Duvalier dictatorships from 1957-86. People also escaped reprisals under the U.S.-backed junta of Gen. Raoul Cedras in the early 1990s, under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and in the violent chaos that followed Aristide's 2004 ouster.

But the losses this time are far more significant.

The destruction was so widespread and so instantaneous -- gutting the capital and its institutions at precisely the moment when help, guidance and new ideas were most needed -- that the absence will be felt for decades.

"It will impact our culture, the future of Haiti," said Pierre-Merite, who sent his wife and three daughters, age 2, 7 and 12, to Chicago days after the quake.

Obama renews backing of Haiti

President Barack Obama on Wednesday renewed America's commitment to the recovery and reconstruction of earthquake-devastated Haiti, telling visiting President Rene Preval he knows the crisis has not passed.

After an Oval Office meeting, Obama stood beside Preval in the White House Rose Garden to praise the Haitian leader's courage and the heroic work of Americans who rushed to help as rescue workers or with generous donations.

Obama said the challenge now is "to prevent a second disaster" with the start of the rainy season in a country where masses of people are without shelter.

"The situation on the ground remains dire," Obama said, "and people should be under no illusion that the crisis is over."