With a tropical depression barreling towards Haiti, doctors and aid workers are rushing to get flights or transport to reach areas devastated by a major earthquake.
Port-au-Prince airport on Monday was bustling with medics and aid workers, with domestic and private charter flights filled with humanitarian teams and supplies headed south.
Saturday’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake killed at least 1,297 people and injured nearly 5,700 as it brought down thousands of homes and buildings in the deeply impoverished Caribbean nation, which is still recovering from another strong earthquake 11 years ago and the assassination of its president, Jovenel Moise, last month.
The earthquake was centred about 125km (78 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince. The areas in and around the city of Les Cayes suffered the biggest hit, putting enormous strain on local hospitals, some of which were badly damaged by the earthquake.
After sundown on Sunday, Les Cayes was darkened by intermittent blackouts, and many people slept outside again, clutching small transistor radios tuned to news, terrified of the continuing aftershocks.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry has declared a one-month state of emergency for the country and said the first aid convoys organised by the government had started moving help to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals were overwhelmed.
“From this Monday, we will move faster. Aid provision is going to be accelerated,” he wrote on Twitter. “We will multiply efforts tenfold to reach as many victims as possible with aid.”
Les Cayes resident Jennie Auguste, who was injured in the earthquake, rested on Sunday on a mattress on an airport tarmac as she waited for a bed at a local hospital or a seat on a plane transporting the injured to Haiti’s capital.
“There has been nothing. No help, nothing from the government,” Auguste’s sister, Bertrande, told The Associated Press news agency on Sunday as Haitians were still trying to take stock of everything around them as the death toll from the disaster soared.
Access to the area has been complicated by months of political turmoil in Haiti, which has left gangs in control of key access routes to parts of the country.
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