Major earthquake strikes Haiti, felt across Caribbean

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President Joe Biden has 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 United States 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 Piñera said.  

A powerful 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 overwhelmed with incoming patients.

The epicenter of the quake was about 78 miles west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and widespread damage was reported in the hemisphere’s poorest nations as a tropical storm also bore down.

The quake was stronger and closer to the surface than the magnitude 7.1 quake that damaged much of the capital in 2010 and killed an estimated 220,000 people. 

Haiti’s civil protection agency said on Twitter that the death toll stood at 304, most in the country’s south. Rescue workers and bystanders were able to pull many people to safety from the rubble. The agency said injured people were still being delivered to hospitals.

Henry declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country and said he would not ask for international help until the extent of the damages was known. He said some towns were almost completely razed 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,’ said Henry. ‘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.

Complicating rescue efforts, the US National Hurricane Center has forecasted that Tropical Storm Grace will reach Haiti late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. 

Prime Minister Ariel Henry said he was mobilizing all available government resources to help victims in the affected areas, and declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country.

He said he would not ask for international help until the extent of the damages is known.

The USGS issued a tsunami warning, saying waves of up to ten feet were possible along the coastline of Haiti but it soon lifted the warning despite a series of smaller aftershocks that continued to shake the island.

Six aftershocks followed the quake and the USGS registered three of them had at least a 4.5 magnitude. A 5.2-magnitude aftershock hit about 12miles northwest of Cavaillon, Haiti, according to the USGS.

‘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 devastating 2010 earthquake, when aid was slow to reach residents after as many as 300,000 were killed.

The nearest big town was Les Cayes, with a population of around 126,000, where two residents told Reuters a major hotel and other buildings had collapsed. 

In Les Cayes, locals said water had briefly flooded the coastal town, causing panic amid fear of a tsunami, but then appeared to retreat.

Haitian media outlets reported some people along the coast had already fled to the mountains.

The quake – which had a depth of six miles – was felt 200 miles away in Cuba and Jamaica.  

 ‘Everyone is really afraid. It’s been years since such a big earthquake,’ said Daniel Ross, a resident in the eastern Cuban city of Guantanamo, adding that his home stood firm but the furniture shook.  

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.

Port-au-Prince resident Naomi Verneus, 34, told the Associated Press she was jolted awake by the earthquake and that her bed was shaking.

She said: ‘I woke up and didn’t have time to put my shoes on. We lived 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.’

Sephora Pierre Louis, another resident of Haiti’s capital, said: ‘In my neighborhood, I heard people screaming. They were flying outside. At least they know to go outside. In 2010, they didn´t know what to do. People are still outside in the street.’ 

The earthquake struck more than a month after President Jovenel Moïse was killed, sending the country into political chaos, and humanitarian aid groups said the earthquake will add to the suffering. 

The country was already battling poverty, spiraling gang violence and Covid-19. 

‘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.

‘This country just never finds a break!’ said Haitian entrepreneur Marc Alain Boucicault on Twitter. 

The impoverished country, where many live in tenuous circumstances, is vulnerable to earthquakes and hurricanes. A 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck in 2018 that killed more than a dozen people.

The 2010 quake destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, as well as administrative buildings and schools, not to mention 60 per cent of Haiti’s healthcare system.

The rebuilding of the country’s main hospital remained incomplete as of this morning’s earthquake and nongovernmental organizations have struggled to make up for the state’s many deficiencies.