Haiti earthquake: Death toll rises to 1,419, injured now at 6,000

A hospital in southwestern Haiti, where a strong earthquake flattened homes, shops and other buildings over the weekend, was so overwhelmed with patients that a lot of had to dwell patios, corridors, verandas and hallways. Then a looming storm expected to bring heavy rains Monday night forced officials to relocate them as best they might given the hospital’s poor conditions.

Even those patients were somewhat fortunate. Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency on Monday raised the price from Saturday’s earthquake to 1,419 and therefore the number of injured to six ,000, many of whom have had to attend under the burning heat, even on an airport tarmac, for help.

“We had planned to place up tents (in hospital patios), but we were told that would not be safe,” said Gede Peterson, director of Les Cayes General Hospital.

It is not the primary time that staff has been forced to improvise. The refrigeration within the hospital’s morgue has not worked for 3 months, but after the earthquake struck Saturday, staff had to store as many as 20 bodies within the small space. Relatives quickly came to require most to non-public embalming services or immediate burial. By Monday only three bodies were within the morgue.

The quake, centered about 125 kilometers (80 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, nearly razed some towns and triggered landslides that hampered rescue efforts during a country that’s the poorest within the occident . Haiti already was battling the coronavirus pandemic, gang violence, worsening poverty and therefore the political uncertainty following the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse when the earthquake sent residents rushing to the streets.

The devastation could soon worsen with the arrival of Tropical Depression Grace, predicted to bring strong winds, heavy rain, mudslides and flash flooding. Les Cayes began to ascertain light rain Monday evening, but it could reach 15 inches (38 centimeters) in some areas, the Civil Protection Agency said. Port-au-Prince was already seeing heavier rains.

“We are working now to make sure that the resources we’ve are getting to get to the places that are hardest hit,” said agency head Jerry Chandler, pertaining to the towns of Les Cayes and Jeremie and therefore the department of Nippes, which are within the country’s southwestern portion.

Injured earthquake victims continued to stream into Les Cayes’ overwhelmed general hospital, three days after the earthquake struck. Patients waited to be treated on stair steps, in corridors and therefore the hospital’s open veranda.

“After two days, they’re nearly always generally infected,” said Dr. Paurus Michelete, who had treated 250 patients and was one among only three doctors on call when the quake hit.

Meanwhile, rescuers and rubbish scavengers dug into the floors of a collapsed hotel Monday during this coastal town, where 15 bodies had already been extracted. Jean Moise Fortunè, whose brother, the hotel owner and a prominent politician, was killed within the quake, believed there have been more people trapped within the rubble.

But supported the dimensions of voids that workers cautiously peered into, perhaps a foot (0.3 meters) thorough , finding survivors appeared unlikely.

As work, fuel and money ran out, desperate Les Cayes residents searched collapsed houses for rubbish to sell. Others waited for money wired from abroad, a mainstay of Haiti’s economy even before the quake.

Anthony Emile waited six hours during a line with dozens of others trying to urge money his brother had wired from Chile, where he has worked since Haiti’s last quake.

“We are waiting since morning for it, but there are too many of us ,” said Emile, a banana farmer who said relatives within the countryside depend upon him giving them money to survive.

Efforts to treat the injured were difficult at the overall hospital, where Michelete said pain killers, analgesics and steel pins to fix fractures were running out amid the crush of patients.

“We are saturated, and other people keep coming,” he said.

Josil Eliophane, 84, crouched on the steps of the hospital, clutching an X-ray showing his shattered long bone and pleading for pain medication.

Michelete said he would give one among his few remaining shots to Eliophane, who ran out of his house because the quake hit, only to possess a wall fall on him.

Nearby, on the hospital’s open-air veranda, patients were on beds and mattresses, attached to IV bags of saline fluid. Others lay within the garden under bed sheets erected to shield them from the brutal sun. None of the patients or relatives caring for them wore face masks amid a coronavirus surge.

Officials said the magnitude 7.2 earthquake left quite 7,000 homes were destroyed and nearly 5,000 damaged from the quake, leaving some 30,000 families homeless. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were destroyed or badly damaged.

Underlining the dire conditions, local officials had to barter with gangs within the seaside district of Martissant to permit two humanitarian convoys each day to undergo the world , the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported. The agency called Haiti’s southern peninsula a “hot spot for gang-related violence,” where humanitarian workers are repeatedly attacked.

The agency said the world has been “virtually unreachable” over the past two months due to road blocks and security concerns. Agency spokeswoman Anna Jefferys said the primary convoy skilled Sunday with government and U.N. personnel. and the U.N. World Food Program plans to send food supplies via trucks Tuesday.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry declared a one-month state of emergency for the entire country and said the primary government aid convoys had started moving help to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals were overwhelmed.

UNICEF executive Henrietta Fore said humanitarian needs were acute, with many Haitians urgently needing health care, clean water and shelter. Children separated from their parents also needed protection, she said.

“Little quite a decade on, Haiti is reeling once more ,” Fore said, pertaining to the 2010 earthquake that ravaged Haiti’s capital, killing tens of thousands. “And this disaster coincides with political instability, rising gang violence, alarmingly high rates of malnutrition among children, and therefore the COVID-19 pandemic — that Haiti has received just 500,000 vaccine doses, despite requiring much more .”

The country of 11 million people received its first batch of US-donated coronavirus vaccines only last month via a United Nations program for low-income countries.

Medical workers from across the region were scrambling to assist as hospitals in Les Cayes started running out of space to perform surgeries.

“Basically, they have everything,” said Dr. Inobert Pierre, a pediatrician with the nonprofit Health Equity International, which oversees St. Boniface Hospital, about two hours from Les Cayes.

Pierre’s medical team was taking some patients to St. Boniface to undergo surgery, but with just two ambulances, they might transport only four at a time.

Working with USAID, the US Coast Guard said a helicopter was transporting medical personnel from the Port-au-Prince to the quake zone and evacuating injured back to Port-au-Prince. Lt. Commander Jason Nieman, a spokesman, said other aircraft and ships were being sent.

At the Les Cayes hospital, Emma Cadet, 41, a carpenter’s wife, hovered over her 18-year-old son, Charles Owen, as he awaited an operation on his broken arm. He was among the lucky patients to possess received pain medication.

Worse off was Nerison Vendredi, 19, lying quiet but alert. No casts or splint would help her because she apparently had suffered internal injuries and will not move.

There were some stories of miracle survivals, but they were becoming fewer because the days passed.

Jacquelion Luxama was leading his goats to a watering place Saturday when a hillside collapsed on him, trapping him amid boulders and a rockslide that stripped skin from his hip.

“I started yelling, and fortunately another famers heard me, and that they came and pulled me out, ” said Luxama, lying on a mattress at the Les Cayes hospital.