An earthquake shook elements of western Haiti on Tuesday, killing not less than 4 folks and injuring three dozen others, authorities mentioned, with extra victims feared trapped beneath the rubble.
The magnitude 4.9 quake occurred simply after 5:00 am (0900 GMT) round 5.5 miles (9 kilometers) off the coast of the remoted Grand’Anse division, some 185 miles west of Port-au-Prince, in response to the US Geological Survey.
The Haitian Crimson Cross mentioned emergency employees had been on the lookout for individuals who should still be trapped beneath the ruins.
“Efforts proceed to seek out survivors,” the group mentioned.
Nearly all of victims lived within the poor neighborhood of Sainte Helene, within the city of Jeremie, the place an AFP photographer noticed a lot of cracked homes.
Three of the lifeless “are members of the identical household and had been killed when their home collapsed,” Christine Monquele, head of Civil Safety in Grand’Anse, advised AFP.
“I do not know what to do,” mentioned Katiana Pierre, a 19-year-old who misplaced her husband and little sister within the quake.
– ‘I misplaced the whole lot’ –
At the least 36 folks had been reported injured.
“We had been in a position to administer first help to the victims,” mentioned Soitmil Lorreus, head of emergency companies on the Saint-Antoine public hospital. Some sufferers had been airlifted to the capital, and Lorreus mentioned the hospital anticipated to obtain extra sufferers from the countryside.
One man, talking from his hospital mattress in a video shared by native information outlet JCOM Haiti, recalled how his neighbors and spouse helped him save his two youngsters.
However his spouse did not make it out alive.
“At daybreak, I heard a deafening noise,” he mentioned. “My spouse, with a begin, requested me to fetch the youngsters from their room. With the assistance of neighbors, I used to be in a position to save the 2 youngsters, however sadly my spouse died.
“The home was utterly destroyed. I misplaced the whole lot.”
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres, mentioned in New York that the world physique was “deeply saddened by the lack of life, destruction of property and struggling of the Haitian folks attributable to the earthquake.”
The quake comes simply days after heavy storms battered Haiti — the poorest nation within the Western hemisphere — leaving not less than 51 folks lifeless and 18 lacking, in response to a Civil Safety companies toll quoted by the United Nations on Tuesday.
The Caribbean nation is commonly hit by damaging earthquakes.
“The UN stands able to work with the Haitian authorities and different companions to assist ease the struggling of these in want because it pertains to the earthquake and naturally, the opposite pure catastrophe which is the flooding and landslides we have seen previously few days,” Dujarric mentioned.
He added that the World Meals Program is ready to distribute some 350,000 meals and different meals help to these in want.
However he mentioned that reduction efforts are hampered by insecurity and harm to roads, an obvious reference to the nation’s swirling gang violence.
In 2010 an enormous 7.0 quake killed greater than 200,000 folks in Haiti, turning the capital Port-au-Prince into ruins and making 1.5 million folks homeless.
In August 2021 the southwest peninsula was ravaged by a fair stronger, 7.2 magnitude quake that killed greater than 2,200 folks and destroyed 130,000 properties.
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