Heavy rains from Tropical Storm Grace battered the island of Haiti on Tuesday, days after a deadly earthquake devastated the Caribbean nation. Saturday’s magnitude 7.2 tremor killed more than 1,000 people and left tens of thousands of others without homes.
Days after the quake, bodies still lie in the streets as officials grapple with the chaos and poor weather. Some hospitals are now too structurally unsafe following the disaster, forcing medical staffers to treat patients outside. Many other people are too scared to return to their homes, fearing another tremor will bring them down.
As people seek what shelter they can, often in makeshift tents, humanitarian workers have been delivering food and tending to injuries. Save the Children has supplied approximately 250 families with tarps, jerricans, and kits to care for babies, but the aid group says the weather is exacerbating the already dire situation.
“I see children crying on the street, people asking us for food, but we are low on food ourselves as well,” Carl-Henry Petit-Frère, a field manager for Save the Children, told the Associated Press. “The organizations that are here are doing what they can, but we need more supplies. Food, clean water, and shelter are needed most, and we need them fast.”
A deeply impoverished and unstable country, Haiti is still reeling from the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, as well as the assassination of its president last month and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
