Haiti raises death toll to at least 1,297 from earthquake (Update 2)

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Haitian authorities on Sunday raised to 1,297 the death toll from the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck the southwest of the country on Saturday.

Civil Protection reported that 1,054 people died in the South department, another 122 in Nippes and 119 in Grand Anse, all provinces of the southwestern peninsula, while two others in the northwest of the country.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Haiti

According to figures provided by the Minister of Communication, Jean Emmanuel, authorities increased to 5,700 the number of people injured by the earthquake, which destroyed 13,694 houses and damaged 13,585 others and numerous hospitals, schools, and other buildings Jacquet to local media.

The death toll almost doubles the figures in the bulletin issued on Sunday morning, when 724 people were reported dead.

The earthquake, which is already one of the ten deadliest earthquakes in Latin America in the last 25 years, was registered some 12 kilometers from the town of Saint-Louis du Sud, with a hypocenter at a depth of 10 kilometers and was also felt in the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

The incident occurs in the midst of a difficult context for Haiti, which has been going through a delicate political and economic crisis since 2018, aggravated by the assassination on July 7 of President Jovenel Moise, perpetrated, according to the investigations, by a commando of 26 mercenaries who broke into his residence in Port-au-Prince.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

On the other hand, Henry thanked the international community’s help, which has made planes, ships, and helicopters available to the country “to deal with the disaster we are facing.”

All the aid arriving from abroad must be coordinated by the Civil Protection department because “we do not want it to arrive in a disorderly fashion,” he stressed in his declarations to the press.

Several countries have offered help to Haiti, among them the United States, one of the first nations to make a statement on what happened. Today, they announced the deployment of a second urban search and rescue unit in the affected areas.

The Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola, began today to dispatch the aid, consisting of 10,000 rations of food and medicines, as well as two million masks and hand gel to protect the population from the contagion of covid-19, according to the Presidency of that country.