A 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on August 14

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on, August 14, leaving more than 2,100 people dead and thousands more injured.

The earthquake’s epicenter was in the country’s southwest, about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) northeast of Saint-Louis-du-Sud, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Haiti is still dealing with fallout from an earthquake in 2010 that killed an estimated 220,000 to 300,000 people. The assassination of President Jovenel Moise last month, which has not yet been solved or properly explained, has added further instability to a country in crisis.

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry promised to accelerate aid and rescue efforts. Haiti relies heavily on donor countries and organizations for relief.

That Saturday’s quake knocked down tens of thousands of buildings in the poorest country in the Americas, which is still recovering from a temblor 11 years ago that killed over 200,000 people. Aside from the dead, the latest quake also injured at least 9,915, with many people still missing or under the rubble, the civil protection service said on Tuesday afternoon.

Relief efforts were already complicated due to political turmoil and difficult road access from the capital to the south due to gang control of key points. Flash flooding and landslides in the wake of Tropical Storm Grace, which by Tuesday afternoon had continued on past Jamaica, exacerbated the situation.

“Countless Haitian families who have lost everything due to the earthquake are now living literally with their feet in the water due to the flooding,” said Bruno Maes, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in the country.

“Right now, about half a million Haitian children have limited or no access to shelter, safe water, healthcare and nutrition.”

The United Nations said it had allocated $8 million in emergency funds to provide relief for affected people.

Latin America countries including Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Colombia and the neighboring Dominican Republic sent food, medicine and supplies. The United States also dispatched supplies and search and rescue teams.

Although criminal gangs have been blocking access roads for months, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs said “successful negotiations” had made it possible for a convoy to reach Les Cayes.

About unholypursuit

A. White, an award winning former librarian, who is also a long time member of Romantic Time and Publisher's Weekly. A. White has been writing for over fifteen years. She took classes in creative writing in college, specializing in ancient myths and legends. and later at a local community center while living in Chicago. In college she won the national contest to verbally list every country in the world, it's capital and ingenious language. Her works are mainly horror, fantasy, extreme, and sci-fi as well as, as some may says, "the truly strange predicament and puzzling." Books that I've written are "Clash with the Immortals, and eleven others which are part of the "Unholy Pursuit saga,". She has been working on the Chronicles since 2007. She wished to complete them all before introducing them to public so the readers wouldn't have to for the continuation to be written. The ideas of the book come from classic literature such as whose work greatly influence the world world such as Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides, Socrates, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle and many more. The "Book of Enoch" influenced the usage of Azazael as a main character and love interest. I created the primary main character from the Chronicle of Saints. I wanted to show them as real flesh and blood with thoughts, desires and yearning as any human. Not as they are so often depicted. So I created one of my own to show her as a real human that everyone can relate to.

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1 Response to A 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on August 14

unholypursuit says:

August 25, 2021 at 1:13 am

Haiti’s Tragic Hurricane History

By Jeffrey Masters, Ph.D. — Director of Meteorology, Weather Underground, Inc.

In many ways, the hurricane season of 2008 was the cruelest ever experienced in Haiti. Four storms–Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike–dumped heavy rains on the impoverished nation. The rugged hillsides, stripped bare of 98% of their forest cover thanks to deforestation, let flood waters rampage into large areas of the country. Particularly hard-hit was Gonaives, the fourth largest city. According to reliefweb.org, the rains from 2008’s four storms killed 793, left 310 missing, injured 593, destroyed 22,702 homes, and damaged another 84,625. About 800,000 people were affected–8% of Haiti’s total population. The flood wiped out 70% of Haiti’s crops, resulting in dozens of deaths of children due to malnutrition in the months following the storms. Damage was estimated at over $1 billion, the costliest natural disaster in Haitian history. The damage amounted to over 5% of the country’s $17 billion GDP, a staggering blow for a nation so poor.

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