Quake-struck Haiti is lashed by heavy rains after storm hits
By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Constant Méheut
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haitians emerged from makeshift shelters Tuesday (17) to resume rescue and reconstruction efforts after Tropical Storm Grace tore across Haiti, which was already reeling from a devastating earthquake.
The rain brought by the storm had largely stopped Tuesday, and many people in affected areas were out looking for loved ones, scavenging for supplies and trying to get aid from humanitarian groups, whose efforts were being hampered by severe flooding across the country. Many had sought refuge in the few public buildings spared by the quake.
“In a situation like this, you feel you’re powerless,” said Abiade Lozama, an Anglican archdeacon based in the south of the country, which was hard hit by the quake. “Many people are in need and there’s nothing you can do.”
Lozama said hundreds of people made homeless by the earthquake Monday (16) night streamed into a technical school he runs in the town of Les Cayes, seeking shelter from rain and wind.
Heavy rains pelted people who had huddled in fields, many of them forced to leave homes damaged in the 7.2-magnitude earthquake, and others who had sought safety outdoors because of a fear of aftershocks that could cause further collapses.
The storm has complicated an already tenuous earthquake relief effort, disrupting an air bridge run by humanitarian groups and the US Coast Guard between affected areas of southern Haiti and the capital. The only road linking southern Haiti to Port-of-Prince, the capital, has come under periodic attack from armed gangs, despite a humanitarian truce offered by some gang leaders following the earthquake.
As Grace made landfall in Haiti, efforts were being made to bring aid to the country’s southwest, which was devastated in the deadly earthquake just two days earlier.
The quake has killed more than 1,400 people and injured nearly 7,000 others — a toll that is expected to rise. UNICEF estimated on Tuesday that about 1.2 million people, including 540,000 children, had been affected by the earthquake.
Several countries, such as Mexico, have flown aid to Haiti in recent days and the United States has sent a search-and-rescue team. On Tuesday, the European Union announced that it was allocating 3 million euros (about $3.5 million) in humanitarian funding to help affected communities.
-New York Times