Every day, the Haitian Civil Protection is forced to revise upwards the macabre counts of the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that hit southwestern Haiti at 8:29 a.m. on Saturday.
The new assessment, communicated Monday afternoon, is 1,419 dead and more than 6,900 injured.
In addition, over 37,000 homes were destroyed.
Help continues to be active in search of the missing or stranded under the ruins, with the approach of a storm that threatens to further aggravate the situation.
Tropical Depression Grace indeed poses the risk of flooding and landslides in Haiti and neighboring Dominican Republic, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center has warned.
"Psychologically, we are not well"
In the small seaside town of Port-Salut as in the rest of the affected regions, residents faced a dilemma on Monday: stay outside to protect themselves from aftershocks or enter damaged buildings to shelter from the expected severe weather. The city hospital has decided: we must try to protect the patients who have piled up in the courtyard, under plastic sheeting, since the earthquake. In the middle of the day Monday, the patients were transferred inside the establishment despite the fear of aftershocks.
Alongside the nurses who take care of the wounded, Aline Cadet, a 26-year-old midwife, is undermined by the announcement of weather reports.
“Psychologically, we are not well.
We don't know at all how we're going to manage, ”she blurted out.
"There are pregnant women here, some have lost their babies by falling or being injured," she laments.
Better help than in 2010
Many countries, including the United States, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Ecuador have offered their assistance with the dispatch of personnel, emergency rations and medical equipment. The American army announced Monday the constitution of a joint military mission, with the deployment already carried out of a team in charge of assessing the situation in the affected areas thanks to aerial observation means. Aerial images taken by US teams "will help determine what aid is needed, where and when," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.
“We want to give a more appropriate response than in 2010 after the earthquake.
All aid from outside must be coordinated by the Directorate of Civil Protection ”, for his part demanded Sunday the Haitian Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, while calling on his fellow citizens to“ national unity ”.
The earthquake of January 12, 2010, magnitude 7, left more than 200,000 dead, more than 300,000 injured and more than a million and a half homeless.
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