Heavy rain from Tropical Storm Grace forced a temporary halt yesterday to the Haitian Government’s response to the deadly weekend earthquake, feeding the growing anger and frustration among thousands who were left homeless.
Grace battered south-western Haiti, which was hit hardest by Saturday’s quake, and officials warned some areas could get 15 inches (38 centimetres) of rain before the storm moved on. Heavy rain also drenched the capital of Port-au-Prince.
The storm hit Haiti late Monday, the same day that the country’s Civil Protection Agency raised the death toll from the earthquake to 1,419 and the number of injured to 6,000, many of whom have had to wait for medical help lying outside in wilting heat.
As rains soaked the earthquake-damaged city of Les Cayes yesterday, patience was running out in the western hemisphere’s poorest nation. Haitians were already struggling with the novel coronavirus, gang violence, worsening poverty, and the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse when the quake hit.
Bodies continued to be pulled from the rubble, and the smell of death hung heavily over a pancaked, three-storey apartment building. A simple bed sheet covered the body of a three-year-old girl that firefighters had found an hour earlier.
Neighbour Joseph Boyer, 53, said he knew the girl’s family.
“The mother and father are in the hospital, but all three kids died,” he said. The bodies of the other two siblings were found earlier.
Source-AP
