August 20, 2021: -Tensions have been increasing over slowly of aid reaching victims of a powerful weekend earthquake that killed above 2,100 people in Haiti and traversed by a drenching tropical depression.
On Wednesday, At the small airport in the southwestern community of Les Cayes, crowds of people gathered outside the fence when an aid flight arrived, and crews began loading boxes into waiting trucks. One of a small squad of Haiti national police, outfitted in military-style uniforms and posted at the airport to guard the aid shipments, fired two warnings shots to disperse a group of young men.
Angry crowds also massed at collapsed buildings in the city that demand tarps to create temporary shelters after Tropical Storm Grace brought heavy rain at the starting of the week.
Late Wednesday, Haiti Civil Protection Agency raised the number of deaths from the earthquake to 2,189 from an estimate of 1,941 and said 12,268 people were injured, while many are still missing.
According to official estimates, the magnitude 7.2 earthquake destroyed over 7,000 homes and damaged almost 12,000, leaving nearly 30,000 families homeless. Schools, offices, and churches also were badly damaged. The Caribbean nation’s southwest region was the most brutal hit.
International aid workers from the grown said that the hospitals in the worst-hit areas are mainly hindered and a desperate need for medical equipment. But the government told at least one foreign organization operating in the country for nearly three decades that it did not need assistance from hundreds of its medical volunteers.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Ariel Henry said that his administration would work to not “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid,” a reference to the chaos after the devastating 2010 earthquake in the country when the government was accused of not getting all of the money raised by donors to the people in need.
Chery said that almost 300 people are still missing in the country.
The U.S. Geological Survey said a preliminary analysis of satellite imagery after the earthquake got hundreds of landslides.
While the officials have suggested that the search phase end and heavy machinery should be called in to clear rubble, Henry came unwillingly to move to that level.
Dr. Barth Green, president, and co-founder of Project Medishare, said he hoped that the U.S. military would establish a field hospital in the affected area.
“The hospitals are collapsed and broken, the operating rooms aren’t functional, and with the tents, they can blow right away as it’s the hurricane season,” Green added.
