Haiti earthquake: injured wait for help as new disaster overwhelms Haiti

LES CAYES, Haiti – In the scorching heat of Haiti, Jennie Auguste is lying with a lost gaze from a thousand meters on a fragile foam mattress placed on the tarmac of an airport. A resident of the southwestern Caribbean nation, Augustus has injuries to his chest, abdomen and arm after the roof of the store where she worked collapsed in a powerful earthquake over the weekend. -end.

She makes an occasional face in pain as her sister or other helpful bystanders fan her. In the badly damaged coastal town of Les Cayes, healthcare is at full capacity, so Augustus can only wait – for a seat in a local hospital or a seat on one of the small planes carrying the injured. to the Haitian capital.

“There was nothing. No help, nothing from the government,” Auguste’s sister Bertrande said on Sunday, as Haitians still tried to take stock of everything around them as the number of victims died. of the disaster escalated.

The country’s Civil Protection Agency said 1,297 dead from the 7.2-magnitude quake had been counted on Sunday, a day after the quake turned thousands of structures to rubble and sparked frenzied rescue efforts before a potential downpour from an approaching storm.

Saturday’s earthquake also left at least 5,700 injured, and thousands more were displaced from destroyed or damaged homes. After sunset on Sunday, Les Cayes was clouded by intermittent blackouts, and many people slept outside again, holding small transistor radios tuned to the news, terrified of the lingering aftershocks.

The devastation could soon worsen with the arrival of Tropical Depression Grace, which is expected to reach Haiti on Monday evening. The civil protection agency said Haitians should expect strong winds, heavy rains, rough seas, landslides and flooding.

Authorities said more than 7,000 homes had been destroyed and nearly 5,000 damaged. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches have also been affected.

The earthquake, centered about 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of the capital Port-au-Prince, nearly razed some towns and triggered landslides that hampered rescue efforts in a country that is most poor in the western hemisphere. He was already grappling with worsening poverty, the coronavirus pandemic, political uncertainty following the assassination of President Jovenel Mose on July 7 and a wave of gang violence.

In a scene widely repeated in the earthquake zone, families recovered their few possessions in Les Cayes and spent the night on a football field. People lined up to buy what little was available: bananas, avocados, and water at a street market.

Workers tore up the rubble of collapsed buildings with heavy machinery, shovels and pickaxes.

Highlighting the dire conditions, local authorities had to negotiate with gangs in the seaside district of Martissant to allow two humanitarian convoys a day to cross the region, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported. The agency called Haiti’s southern peninsula a “hot spot for gang violence,” where aid workers have been repeatedly attacked.

The agency said the area was “virtually inaccessible” for the past two months due to roadblocks and security concerns. Agency spokeswoman Anna Jefferys said the first convoy passed Sunday with government and UN personnel. She added that the UN World Food Program planned to send food by truck on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry has declared a month-long state of emergency for the whole country and said government-organized first aid convoys have started delivering aid to areas where cities were destroyed and hospitals overwhelmed.

“We salute the dignity, the resilience effort of the victims and their ability to start over,” Henry told reporters. “From my observations, I deduce that Haitians want to live and progress. Let us unite to offer these people a living environment conducive to development.

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said humanitarian needs are acute, with many Haitians in urgent need of health care, clean water and shelter. Children who have been separated from their parents need protection, she said.

Referring to the 2010 earthquake that devastated the Haitian capital, killing tens of thousands, Fore said: “A little over a decade later, Haiti is in shock again. And this disaster coincides with political instability, rising gang violence, alarming rates of malnutrition among children, and the COVID-19 pandemic – for which Haiti has only received 500,000 doses of vaccine, though. that he needs more. “

The country of 11 million people only received its first batch of coronavirus vaccines donated by the United States last month through a United Nations low-income country program.

Medical workers from across the region rushed to help as hospitals in Les Cayes began to run out of space to perform surgeries.

“Basically, they need everything,” said Dr. Inobert Pierre, a pediatrician at the nonprofit Health Equity International, which oversees St. Boniface Hospital, about two hours from Les Cayes.

“A lot of patients have open wounds and they’ve been exposed to not-so-clean items,” added Pierre, who visited two hospitals in Les Cayes – one with some 200 patients, the other with around 90. “We anticipate a lot of infections. “

Pierre’s medical team would take patients to Saint-Boniface for surgery, but with only two ambulances, they could only transport four at a time.

Small planes from a private company and the Florida-based missionary service Agape Flights landed at Port-au-Prince airport on Sunday carrying around half a dozen wounded from the Cayes area. Young men with bandages and a woman were hoisted on stretchers to the waiting Haitian Red Cross ambulances.

Silvestre Plaza Rico, who oversaw one of the volunteer flights, said the rescue planes flew several airlifts with about half a dozen injured each on Saturday. “There were a lot, a lot, a lot, from different cities,” Plaza Rico said.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who oversees the U.S. effort to aid Haiti, said on Sunday that USAID was sending a search and rescue team from Virginia at the request of the Haitian government. The 65-person team will bring specialist tools and medical supplies, she said on Twitter.

Working with USAID, the US Coast Guard said a helicopter was transporting medical personnel from the Haitian capital to the quake area and evacuating the wounded to Port-au-Prince. Lt. Commander Jason Nieman, a spokesperson, said more planes and ships were being sent.

Several members of Cuba’s 253-member health care mission in Haiti were at the scene. State media in the socialist nation showed photos of them giving first aid to victims injured by the earthquake.

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Associated Press editors Collin Binkley in Boston, Trenton Daniel in New York, and Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City contributed to this report.