2021-08-16 11:28:10
DN goes to Haiti for an update on the humanitarian situation after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the country’s southwestern peninsula Saturday. The government has declared a state of emergency and says nearly 1,300 people have died and more than 5,700 are injured.
Rescue workers are scrambling to find survivors as Tropical Storm Grace is expected to bring heavy rains to the island. Tens of thousands of people in devastated areas are now sleeping on the streets due to unstable buildings that could still collapse amid aftershocks.
“It’s just one more item in a very, very long list of traumatic events that the people of Haiti are sustaining,” says Nadesha Mijoba, country director for the Haitian Health Foundation, in Jérémie, near the epicenter of the earthquake.
DN also speaks with Ann Lee, chief executive officer of CORE, Community Organized Relief Effort, who says the earthquake is exposing a larger problem of a “lack of systems and investment in existing systems.”
