LES CAYES (Haiti), Aug 17 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Doctors in Haiti battled in makeshift tents to save the lives of hundreds of injured people, including young children and the elderly, outside hospitals overwhelmed by an earthquake that killed at least 1,419 people.
While rescue teams toiled to dig out survivors of Saturday’s 7.2 magnitude quake, a storm dumped heavy rain on the southern coast of Haiti, bringing flooding near the worst-hit areas and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis, local residents said.
Deus Deronneth, a politician from the Jacmel region, posted a video on Twitter showing a torrent of water sweeping through a local town and confirmed the flooding.
Aid workers were hurrying to beat the onset of Tropical Depression Grace, which on Monday evening was moving west-northwest along southern Haiti, dumping heavy rain.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast Grace would churn alongside the quake zone, and could douse some areas with up to 38 cm of rain through Tuesday.
Some Haitians who lost their homes have been sleeping outdoors, many traumatised by memories of a magnitude 7 quake that struck far closer to Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Those people in the streets would be exposed to rains amid a rising risk of waterborne diseases, such as cholera, according to Jerry Chandler, head of Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency.
“We do have a serious issue,” Chandler said on Sunday.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry said there was no time to lose.
“From this Monday, we will move faster. Aid provision is going to be accelerated,” he wrote on Twitter. “We will multiply efforts tenfold to reach as many victims as possible with aid.”
Port-au-Prince airport on Monday bustled with medics and aid workers scrambling to get to the south with supplies.
The United Nations called for a “humanitarian corridor” to enable aid to pass through gang-held territories.
The earthquake brought down tens of thousands of buildings in the deeply impoverished country, which is still recovering from a major temblor 11 years ago and the assassination of its president, Jovenel Moise, on July 7.
Dozens of churches, hotels, homes and schools were seriously damaged or ruined by the quake. Haitian authorities said on Monday afternoon that 1,419 fatalities had been confirmed, with about 6,900 people injured and 37,312 houses destroyed.
Data circulating among aid groups indicated over 450 additional deaths had been logged in the hardest-hit department, and Haitian officials warned the toll was likely to rise.
The areas in and around the city of Les Cayes – about 150km west of the Caribbean country’s capital Port-au-Prince – suffered the most damage, putting enormous strain on local hospitals, some of which were badly damaged.
Collapsed buildings lined the main street of the seafront city of 100,000 people. Dozens of men dug through rubble from a hotel whose owner died in the quake, residents said.
The city’s general hospital was overwhelmed, with doctors and nurses attending patients in tents in its crowded parking lot because there was no more room inside.
Dozens lay on beds and mattresses on the grass outside the hospital. Inside, patients were on stretchers on the floor or on cots in crowded rooms with relatives by their sides.
Babies were being transported out of the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit over concerns that the building was unsafe after the quake, according to a witness.
It was unclear whether presidential elections planned for November to draw a line under the political confusion since Moise was assassinated could be held. — NNN-AGENCIES
