‘The needs are enormous’

Up to press time, over 300 people were reported to be killed and hundreds injured and missing after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti yesterday morning. Prime Minister Ariel Henry said he was rushing aid to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals overwhelmed with incoming patients.

Henry declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country and said he would not ask for international help until the extent of the damage was known. He said some towns were almost completely razed and the government had people in the coastal town of Les Cayes to help plan and coordinate the response. However, chairman of CARICOM, Gaston Browne, said the regional body was now organising assistance. The United States, Jamaica and several other countries also pledged assistance. The Pan American Health Organization has also deployed a team of experts to the country.

The epicentre of the quake was about 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the United States Geological Survey said, and widespread damage was reported even as a tropical storm approached.

Haiti’s civil protection agency said that the death toll stood at over 300 and that search teams would be sent out. Rescue workers and bystanders were able to pull many people to safety from the rubble, the agency said. It said injured people were still being brought to hospitals.

“The most important thing is to recover as many survivors as possible under the rubble,” said Henry. “We have learned that the local hospitals, in particular that of Les Cayes, are overwhelmed with wounded, fractured people.”

He said the International Red Cross and hospitals in unaffected areas were helping to care for the injured, and appealed to Haitians for unity.

“The needs are enormous. We must take care of the injured and fractured, but also provide food, aid, temporary shelter and psychological support,” he said.

Later, as he boarded a plane bound for Les Cayes, Henry said he wanted “structured solidarity” to ensure the response was coordinated to avoid the confusion that followed the devastating 2010 earthquake, when aid was slow to reach residents after as many as 300,000 were killed.

US President Joe Biden authorised an immediate response and named USAID Administrator Samantha Power as the senior official coordinating the US effort to help Haiti. USAID will help to assess damage and assist in rebuilding, said Biden, who called the United States a “close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti”.

The reports of overwhelmed hospitals come as Haiti struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic and a lack of resources to deal with it. Just last month, the country of 11 million people received its first batch of US-donated coronavirus vaccines, via a United Nations programme for low-income countries.

LEADERS CALL FOR COURAGE

The earthquake also struck just over a month after President Jovenel Moïse was killed, sending the country into political chaos. His widow, Martine Moïse, posted a message on Twitter yesterday calling for unity among Haitians: “Let’s put our shoulders together to bring solidarity. It is this connection that makes us strong and resilient. Courage. I am always by your side.”

Rescue efforts were hampered by a landslide triggered by the quake that blocked a major road connecting the hard-hit towns of Jeremie and Les Cayes, according to Haiti’s civil protection agency.

Humanitarian workers said gang activity in the seaside district of Martissant, just west of the Haitian capital, also was complicating relief efforts.

Information about deaths and damage was slow coming to Port-au-Prince because of spotty internet service, but UNICEF planned to send medical supplies to two hospitals in the south, in Les Cayes and Jeremie.

Videos posted to social media showed collapsed buildings near the epicentre and people running into the streets.

People in Port-au-Prince felt the tremor and many rushed into the streets in fear, although there did not appear to be damage there.

The impoverished country, where many live in tenuous circumstances, is vulnerable to earthquakes and hurricanes. It was struck by a magnitude 5.9 earthquake in 2018 that killed more than a dozen people, and a vastly larger magnitude 7.1 quake that damaged much of the capital in 2010 and killed an estimated 300,000 people.

The National Hurricane Center has forecasted that Tropical Storm Grace will reach Haiti late tomorrow night or early Tuesday morning.

Humanitarian aid groups said the earthquake would only worsen the nation’s suffering.

“We’re concerned that this earthquake is just one more crisis on top of what the country is already facing, including the worsening political stalemate after the president’s assassination, COVID and food insecurity,” said Jean-Wickens Merone, spokesman for World Vision Haiti.