Les Cayes: The 7.2 magnitude earthquake that jolted the Caribbean country Haiti on Saturday has taken a jump of over 500 in the death toll after Tropical Storm Grace forced a temporary halt to search and rescue operations. According to the Civil Protection Agency, the death toll now stands at 1,941 while the number of wounded people reaches 9,900. Southwestern Haiti, which was hit hardest by Saturday’s quake, was later battered by Grace, and officials have warned that some areas could get 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain before the storm moved on. Meanwhile, the temporary halt in rescue efforts caused by Tropical Storm Grace has sparked anger among thousands who were left homeless.
The intermittent rain fell in the earthquake-damaged city of Les Caves and in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Previously, the country has been battling with coronavirus, gang violence, poverty, and the Presidential assassination of Jovenel Moise. In the badly damaged town of Les Caves, the bodies are continued to be pulled from the rubble and the smell of death hung heavily over a pancaked, three-story apartment building.
A simple bed sheet covered the body of a three-year-old girl that firefighters had found an hour earlier. Neighbour Joseph Boyer, 53, said he knew the girl’s family. The mother and father are in the hospital, but all three kids died, he said. The bodies of the other two siblings were found earlier. Illustrating the lack of the government, the volunteer firefighters of Cap-Haitien city had left the body out in the rain as the police have to be present before a body can be taken away. Another neighbour, James Luxama, 24, repeated a popular rumour at many disaster scenes, saying that someone was sending text messages for help from inside the rubble. But Luxama had not personally seen or received such a message.
A throng of angry, shouting men gathered in front of the collapsed building depicting the lack of support by the Government. “The photographers come through, the press, but we have no tarps for our roofs,” said one man, who refused to give his name. The head of Haiti’s office of civil protection, Jerry Chandler, acknowledged the situation. Earthquake assessments had to be paused because of the heavy rain, and people are getting aggressive, Chandler said on Tuesday.
Some children were orphaned while some youngsters were starting to go hungry, said Carl-Henry Petit-Fr re, a field manager for Save the Children, which said in a statement that it is distributing what it could to people living on the streets without protection from the wind and rain. “I see children crying on the street, people asking us for food, but we are low on food ourselves as well,” Petit-Fr re said, adding that children were warned not to go into houses because they could collapse.” The organisations that are present here are doing what they can, but the city needs more immediate supplies such as Food, clean water, and shelter.
A total of 20 soldiers showed up to help rescuers at the collapsed apartment building. Till now, volunteers with poorly equipped tools such as sledgehammers and bare hands have been the only source of help, said Canadian volunteer Randy Lodder, director of the Adoration Christian School in Haiti. Sarah Charles, an assistant administrator for the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, said its disaster response teams were forced to suspend operations as the storm arrived Monday, but members were back on Tuesday to continue helping.
“We do not anticipate that the death toll related to this earthquake will be anywhere near the 2010 earthquake, where more than 200,000 people were killed, Charles told reporters. The scale of the damage also was not as severe as that earthquake, she said, adding, “that’s not what we’re seeing on the ground right now”.
In a statement, the US military’s Southern Command said it was moving eight helicopters from Honduras to Haiti and that seven US Coast Guard cutters were in route to support the USAID team. Two Coast Guard helicopters and US Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft have been taking aerial images of devastated areas. The effort was being mounted to provide the kind of emergency response that is necessary for a human tragedy and catastrophe like this, as said by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House. John Morrison, Public Information Officer for the Fairfax Co. (Virginia) Urban Search and Rescue, said that the team was still trying to find the survivors. Two US Coast Guard helicopters had ferried searchers to six stricken communities on Monday.
Morrison added that the team has reported that food, health care services, safe drinking water, hygiene, sanitation, and shelter are all priority needs. He noted that they have not found any signs of alive people trapped in buildings. The rain and wind have raised the threat of mudslides and flash flooding as storm Grace slowly passed over southwestern Haiti’s Tiburon Peninsula before heading toward Jamaica and southeastern Cuba. Forecasters said it could become a hurricane before hitting Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
(With Agency inputs )