Four dead, homes demolished as earthquake strikes southwestern Haiti

The town of Jeremie in Haiti’s southwest region was struck by a “moderate” earthquake on Tuesday, June 6, 2023. At least two people were killed, authorities confirmed.© PATRICK FARRELL/Miami Herald/TNS

Amagnitude 5.5 earthquake struck Haiti’s southwest region early Tuesday morning, destroying homes and creating panic in the country’s Grand’Anse region, where heavy rains over the weekend washed away parts of a main bridge and left a trail of disaster.

Jerry Chandler, the head of the country’s Office of Civil Protection, said at least four fatalities had been confirmed, along with 32 people injured. Disaster responders were still assessing damages, he added.

Three of the deaths occurred in the neighborhood of Sté-Hélène, a slum located inside the city of Jérémie. Ralph Simon, a local journalist who runs the online site JCOMHaiti, said the people were killed when two houses collapsed, one on top of the other.

“Where the houses collapsed, there is no way to get equipment in there so they are doing it all manually,” he said. “People are trying to go in the rubble to see if they can find the bodies. But one body was removed and another is still inside. There is also a child that they have not yet found. That’s why they are saying there are three people who died.”

JCOMHaiti published some of the first images of the disaster, which showed buildings turned into rubble, some of the reported dozen injured and being treated for lacerations and people searching for loved ones in a collapsed whole of pink-colored concrete. One image showed a child face down buried under debris.

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