Haitians picking up pieces again after earthquake
Survivors sifting through the rubble of their earthquaketoppled cinder block homes in Haiti on Sunday were rattled by a magnitude 5.2 aftershock that caused panic and threatened to raise the death toll even further from 12.
The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the aftershock was located 9.8 miles (15.8 kilometres) north-northwest of Port-de-Paix, the city hard hit by Saturday night’s 5.9 magnitude earthquake. Sunday’s aftershock had a depth of 10 kilometres.
“It was an aftershock. It was at the same location,” said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the USGS. “This is the first significant aftershock.”
The tremors caused panic on streets where emergency teams were providing relief to victims of Saturday’s quake, which toppled homes and rickety buildings in several cities.
Haiti’s civil protection agency said at least seven people died in the coastal city of Port-de-Paix and three people died in the nearby community of GrosMorne in Artibonite province.
Among the dead from Saturday night’s quake were a five-year-old boy crushed by his collapsing house and a man killed in a falling auditorium.
Authorities said 188 people were injured. Nun Maryse Alsaint, director of the San Gabriel National School in Gros-Morne, where several classrooms were severely damaged, said that about 500 students would not be able to return to school today.