A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Haiti this Saturday and caused several deaths, as well as material damage in the southwest of the island, and revived terrible memories of the great earthquake of 2010.
“There are deaths, I confirm, but I do not yet have the precise record,” he said the director of civil protection in the country, Jerry Chandler. Prime Minister Ariel Henry is on his way to the national emergency operations center in Port-au-Prince and is expected to speak at a press conference, he added.
Damage
The earthquake occurred 12km from the city of Saint-Louis-du-Sud, located some 160 km southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince, around 8:29 a.m. local time (2:30 p.m. in Paris), according to the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS). A tsunami warning was issued in the wake of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency before being quickly lifted.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry has announced on Twitter that he would go on site with the competent authorities in the coming hours, in order to “assess the situation as a whole”. “I appeal to the spirit of solidarity and commitment of all Haitians, in order to unite to face this dramatic situation,” he added.
“The roof of the cathedral has fallen”
The long shock was felt throughout the country and material damage has already been recorded in several towns on the southwestern peninsula of the island, according to witnesses. With more than 200,000 inhabitants, the agglomeration of Jérémie suffered significant damage in the city center, which mainly consisted of old single-storey houses. “The roof of the cathedral fell,” detailed Job Joseph, a resident of Jeremiah.
“The main street is blocked (…) This is where all the economic activity of the city is”. “People are distraught, the parents are with their children in their arms and are leaving the city because there are rumors of a tsunami,” said Tamas Jean Pierre. A tsunami warning had indeed been launched in the wake of the earthquake by the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency before being quickly lifted. The city of Jeremiah, nicknamed the city of poets, is relatively isolated from the country because the national road that crosses the peninsula has not yet been completed.
Painful memory
“I was inside my house when it started to shake, I was near a window and I saw all the things falling,” said Christella Saint Hilaire, 21, who lives near the epicenter of the earthquake. “A piece of wall fell on my back but I am not too injured”, continued the young woman. “Several houses have completely collapsed. “On videos shared online, residents have filmed the ruins of various concrete buildings, including a church in which a ceremony was apparently underway Saturday morning in the town of Les Anglais, 200km southwest of Port- au-Prince.
The poorest country in the Americas still remembers the earthquake of January 12, 2010, which devastated the capital and several provincial towns. More than 200,000 people were killed and over 300,000 others were injured in the disaster. More than a million and a half Haitians were then left homeless, placing the authorities and the international humanitarian community before the colossal challenge of reconstruction in a country without land registry or building rules.
Without succeeding in meeting this reconstruction challenge, Haiti, which is also regularly hit by hurricanes, has in ten years plunged into an acute socio-political crisis.