Haiti Earthquake Kills Nearly 1,300

Haiti Earthquake Kills Nearly 1,300

August 14, 2021 ctn_admin

Nearly 1,300 people are dead and hundreds more missing following a major earthquake in Haiti on Saturday.

A quake registering 7.2 on the Richter scale hit early Saturday in southwestern Haiti, near a town called Petit-Trou-de-Nippes. The town is about 150 kilometres from the capital of Port-au-Prince, which was hit by a terrible earthquake in 2010 that killed some 250,000 people.

Initial reports suggested some 225 people were killed, but that was adjusted on the weekend to nearly 1,300.

Canadian Haitians are desperately trying to reach loved ones back home in Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

“It’s obvious that we’re like, ‘not again,'” Marjorie Villefranche, who runs La Maison d’Haïti, a non-profit resource centre for the Haitian community in Montreal, told the CBC. “For the community in Quebec, we’re experiencing this with a huge feeling of helplessness. We are far from our loved ones, we are far from the country, we’re trying to understand what’s going on.”

A story posted on the CTV News site said the nearest big town is Les Cayes, where many buildings collapsed or suffered major damage, according to authorities, who said they were searching for survivors.

“I saw bodies being pulled out of the rubble, injured and perhaps dead people,” said Les Cayes resident Jean Marie Simon, 38, who was at the market when the earthquake struck and ran home to see if his family was safe. “I heard cries of pain everywhere I passed through.”

Haiti has had a troubled past. The country’s president was assassinated last month.

“The streets are filled with screaming,” Archdeacon Abiade Lozama, head of an Episcopal church in Les Cayes, one of the afflicted cities, told the New York Times. “People are searching, for loved ones or resources, medical help, water.”