Earthquake fells buildings, leaves southwest Haiti reeling
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck southwestern Haiti on Saturday, killing at least 304 people and injuring at least 1,800 others as buildings tumbled into rubble. Prime Minister Ariel Henry said he was rushing aid to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals were overwhelmed with incoming patients.
The U.S. Geological Survey placed the epicenter about 75 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince, causing widespread damage there as Tropical Storm Grace approached. Seismologists said it had a depth of 7 miles and was felt 200 miles away in Jamaica.
If verified, it would make the seismic event stronger than the 7.0 quake that hit Haiti in 2010, which killed nearly 250,000 people.
The quake flattened build
ings and trapped people under rubble in at least two cities in the western part of the country’s southern peninsula.
Haiti’s civil protection agency said Saturday on Twitter that the death toll stood at 304, mostly in the country’s south, and that search teams would be sent to the area. Rescue workers and bystanders were able to pull many people to safety from the rubble. It said injured people were still being taken to hospitals.
At least two cities reported major devastation: Les Cayes and Jeremie. Phone lines were down in Petit Trou de Nippes, the epicenter of the quake, and no news emerged immediately from that city, leaving Haitian officials fearing the worst.
Haiti’s embassy in the U.S. said in a statement that “the Haitian Government believes high casualties are probable given the earthquake’s magnitude.”
The USGS issued a “red alert” for the disaster and said fatalities could reach into the thousands.
“Past red alerts have required a national or international response,” the USGS said.
Henry declared a onemonth state of emergency for the whole country and said he would not ask for international help until the extent of the damage is known. He said some towns were severely damaged, and the government had people in the coastal town of Les Cayes to help plan and coordinate the response.
“The most important thing is to recover as many survivors as possible under the rubble,” Henry said. “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 2010 earthquake, when aid was slow to reach residents.
U.S. President Joe Biden authorized an immediate response and named USAID Administrator Samantha Power as the senior official coordinating the U.S effort to help Haiti. USAID will help to assess damage and assist in rebuilding, said Biden, who called the U.S. a “close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti.”
A growing number of countries offered help, including Argentina and Chile, which said it was preparing to send humanitarian aid. “Once again, Haiti has been hit by adversity, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said.
LAWMAKER KILLED
Among those killed in the earthquake was Gabriel Fortune, a longtime lawmaker and former mayor of Les Cayes. He died along with several others when the 40-unit hotel Le Manguier collapsed, the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported.
Philippe Boutin, 37, who lives in Puerto Rico but visits his family annually in Les Cayes, said his mother was saying morning prayers when the shaking began but was able to safely leave the house.
The earthquake, he said, coincided with festivities to celebrate the town’s patron saint, adding that the hotel likely was full and the small town had more people than usual.
“We still don’t know how many people are under the rubble,” he said.
“The streets are filled with screaming,” said Archdeacon Abiade Lozama, head of an Episcopal church in Les Cayes. “People are searching for loved ones or resources, medical help, water.”
On the tiny island of Ile-aVache, about 6.5 miles from Les Cayes, the quake damaged a seaside resort popular with Haitian officials, business leaders, diplomats and humanitarian workers. Fernand Sajous, owner of the Abaka Bay Resort, said by telephone that nine of the hotel’s 30 rooms collapsed, but he said they were vacant at the time, and no one was injured.
“They disappeared — just like that,” Sajous said.
Former Haiti Prime Minister Rosny Smarth, who lives in Cavaillon in the south, said he was at home when he felt the ground rumbling.
“I ran out with my brother,” said Smarth, who retired to the region from Port-auPrince last year. “A lot of homes in Cavaillon have been destroyed.”
ROAD BLOCKED
Rescue efforts were hampered when a landslide triggered by the quake blocked a major road connecting 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.
“Nobody can travel through the area,” Ndiaga Seck, a UNICEF spokesman in Portau-Prince, said by phone. “We can only fly over or take another route.”
Seck said information about deaths and damage was slow arriving in Port-au-Prince because of spotty internet service, but UNICEF planned to send medical supplies to two hospitals in Les Cayes and Jeremie.
And even as damage assessments were ramping up, the country was still seeing a string of smaller aftershocks. They are a common occurrence after big earthquakes but unnerving for residents and potentially dangerous in areas with heavily damaged structures.
Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the USGS, said aftershocks likely will continue for weeks or months, with the largest so far registering magnitude 5.2.
“We are deeply concerned about the devastation that this earthquake causes in a country already hit by extreme poverty, social and political unrest,” said Marcelo Viscarra, the national director for World Vision Haiti, a Christian humanitarian group that said it was positioning supplies to be able to help 6,000 people.
VIDEOS OF DAMAGE
Videos posted to social media showed collapsed buildings near the epicenter 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.
Naomi Verneus, a 34-yearold resident of Port-au-Prince, said she was jolted awake by the earthquake and that her bed was shaking.
“I woke up and didn’t have time to put my shoes on. We lived [through] the 2010 earthquake, and all I could do was run. I later remembered my two kids and my mother were still inside. My neighbor went in and told them to get out. We ran to the street,” Verneus said.
The reports of overwhelmed hospitals come as Haiti struggles with the pandemic and a lack of resources to deal with it. Just last month, the country of 11 million people received its first batch of U.S.-donated coronavirus vaccines, via a United Nations program for low-income countries.
The earthquake also struck just over a month after President Jovenel Moise was killed, sending the country into political chaos. His widow, Martine Moise, posted a message on Twitter 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.”
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 magnitude 7.1 quake that damaged much of the capital in 2010 and killed an estimated 300,000 people.
“My initial reaction was, ‘Dear lord, not another hit,’” said Florida International University professor Richard Olson, who studies the politics of disasters. “We’re in the middle of hurricane season. They haven’t ever really recovered from the 2010 event, and then the assassination and political instability that surrounds that. I’m almost afraid of anything else that can go wrong.”
The National Hurricane Center has forecast that Tropical Storm Grace will reach Haiti late Monday or early Tuesday.
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.
Information for this article was contributed by Evens Sanon, Tammy Webber, Josh Boak and Trenton Daniel of The Associated Press; by Maria Abi-Habib and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times; and by Jacqueline Charles, Syra Ortiz-Blanes, David Ovalle and Michael Wilner of the Miami Herald (TNS).