Haitian Last Friday, people in desperate need of food robbed a humanitarian convoy and fought for donations because, nearly a week later, people were angry at the slow speed of aid delivery. Devastating earthquake More than 2,000 people were killed.
Damaged or impassable roads hinder efforts to provide assistance to remote areas in the southern part of this impoverished Caribbean country, which were hardest hit by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake last Saturday. With hundreds still missing, the hope of finding anyone alive is fading.
The aid organization Food for the Poor said that on Friday, four of their trucks were attacked and looted by local residents while delivering food and water to rural communities in the south.
The charity stated that neither the driver nor the truck was harmed, and the other five trucks were able to reach their destination safely.
“Poor People’s Food remains committed to its mission to help those affected by this terrible tragedy,” it said in a statement, adding that its staff are working hard to reach the most remote communities in need.
In the hard-hit city of Lekay, a scuffle broke out after former President Michel Martelli visited a local hospital on Friday afternoon. A Reuters witness said that one of his staff handed an envelope full of cash to a person in the crowd and asked them to distribute it to them, triggering a fierce money grab.
Landslides and cracks in the asphalt on the mountain road between Les Cayes and Jeremie in the northwest-the two worst-hit urban areas-have made it more difficult to provide assistance to agricultural communities that lack food and drinking water.
The route is littered with boulders and occasionally stranded trucks.
“We are absolutely at a loss,” Prime Minister Ariel Henry said at a meeting with the Organization of American States, saying that some communities have been razed to the ground. “Every commune, every city, and every village in that area has been severely hit.”
Henry thanked foreign allies for their assistance.
As the poorest country in the Americas, Haiti is still recovering from the 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people.
According to the authorities, President Jovenel Moise was assassinated by a group of mainly Colombian mercenaries on July 7, causing the situation to become more turbulent.
The earthquake last Saturday destroyed tens of thousands of houses and claimed the lives of at least 2,189 people. Authorities said that about 332 people were missing and 12,200 were injured.
The powerful storm that triggered the landslide this week made it more difficult to search for the victims.
Many hospitals are still saturated in the worst-hit areas. At Les Cayes Airport, helicopters transported the wounded to the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Two doctors were kidnapped by gangs in the capital, including one of the few trained plastic surgeons in Haiti, which added to the pressure. According to local media reports, some hospitals were temporarily closed in protest, demanding the release of doctors.
Dig a grave
In the village of Marceline, 25 kilometers (16 miles) north of Les Cayes, hundreds of people gathered to receive food and medical services in a mobile clinic and aid distribution organized by the Haitian non-profit organization PWOP.
One of the patients was a girl with debris embedded in the wound under her knee, which extended to the bone. When the doctor cleaned and disinfected the wound without anesthesia, she screamed in pain.
In other parts of the village, some people dig graves for funerals, while other residents work hard to remove a large pile of rubble to find the remains of their loved ones. The air was full of the smell of rotting corpses.
Amerlin Dorcy investigated the rescue work. When the earthquake struck, his mother, Seralia Dejoit, was attending a voodoo ceremony in the house.
“She is still missing. We don’t even have her body to bury,” Dorsey said, explaining that his mother was invited by the chief priestess to sing at the ceremony.
The disaster reminded Dorsey of the 2010 earthquake. He escaped from the collapsed three-story building in Port-au-Prince and survived.
“Now there is another earthquake, and my mother is the victim,” he said.
(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener and Ricardo Arduengo; supplementary report by Gessika Thomas in Port-au-Prince; writing by Drazen Jorgic; editing by Daniel Flynn, Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)
