Oxygen plant among earthquake-damaged buildings in Haiti
LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — As if Haiti’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake, a tropical storm and the coronavirus pandemic weren’t enough, the temblor damaged the only medical oxygen plant in the southern part of the country.
The building that housed the oxygen concentrator machines that the region depended on partially collapsed, and the machines were upended. The Etheuss company is run by the a family famous for their vetiver perfume oils plant in the city of Les Cayes, one of the areas hardest hit by Saturday's earthquake.
“We are trying to get the oxygen production started again. That is our responsibility, because many people depend on it,” said Kurtch Jeune, one of the brothers who run the plant, as he showed reporters through the damaged, rubble-strewn plants on Thursday.
The quake left concrete pillars and roofs at the facility leaning, and cement block rubble battered the tanks, electrical system and the delicate web of copper tubing that fills vital oxygen plants. “The oxygen generators are upside down,” Jeune said. “We did get a promise of help from the public works department to get the rubble out with excavators.”
Jeune said that, apart from two medical oxygen plants in the capital, Port-au-Prince, his factory was the only one serving local hospitals. As the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on, Jeune says demand for oxygen has gone up 200% in the last month.
“We have the capacity to supply 40 oxygen cylinders per day,” Jeune said. “We supply several hospitals.”
The powerful earthquake that struck Haiti's southwestern peninsula killed at least 2,189 and injured 12,268 people, according to official figures. More than 300 people are estimated to still be missing, said Serge Chery, head of civil defense for the Southern Province, which includes the small port city of Les Cayes.
More than 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving about 30,000 families homeless, according to official estimates. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.
The earthquake was trailed by a tropical storm that brought heavy rain and strong winds at the beginning of the week.
Private relief supplies and shipments from the U.S. government and others began flowing more quickly into Haiti on Thursday, but the Caribbean nation’s entrenched poverty, insecurity and lack of basic infrastructure still presented huge challenges to getting food and urgent medical care to all those who need it.
Adding to the problems, a major hospital in the capital of Port-au-Prince, where many of the injured were being sent, closed for two days beginning Thursday to protest the kidnapping of two doctors, including one of the country’s few orthopedic surgeons.
The abductions dealt a blow to attempts to control criminal violence that has threatened disaster response efforts in the capital.
Further, a group of 18 Colombian volunteer search-and-rescue workers had to be escorted out of the quake-hit city of Jeremie under police protection after a false rumor circulated that they had been involved in the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. The workers took shelter Wednesday night at a civil defense office, and police escorted them to the airport on Thursday.
Moise’s killing, still unsolved, is suspected of being carried out by a group of Colombian mercenaries. Despite what happened to the Colombian rescue workers, Haiti is welcoming “everyone who is coming to bring assistance,” said Jerry Chandler, the head of the national Civil Protection Agency.
Health care facilities in the Western Hemisphere poorest nation were already at a critical point before the earthquake because of the pandemic. The country of 11 million people has reported 20,556 cases and 576 deaths of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Haiti received its first batch of U.S.-donated coronavirus vaccines only last month via a United Nations program for low-income countries.
The rest of Jeune’s factory, which produces an essential oil used in fine perfumes, was also badly damaged.
The family’s business processes bales of beige, stringy roots culled from the vetiver plant toil.
Vetiver oil is also used for cosmetics, soaps and aromatherapy. It generates an estimated $12 million in revenue a year and employs anywhere from 15,000 to 60,000 farmers.
The damage to the factory threatens Haiti’s already perilous rural economy, plagued by drought, soil erosion and tropical storms.
Haiti produces more than 70 tons of vetiver oil a year, surpassing Indonesia, China, India, Brazil and the neighboring Dominican Republic. It is one of the country’s top exports, with up to 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) harvested annually. But more than 60% of the crop still comes from individual producers, many of whom are struggling financially, according to Gabriel Gelin, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program in Haiti.
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Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Tensions rise in Haiti over trickle of aid following quake and storm
19/08/2021 |
BY MARK STEVENSON AND EVENS SANON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tensions have been growing in Haiti over the slow pace of aid reaching victims of a powerful weekend earthquake that killed more than 2,100 people and was trailed by the drenching rain of Tropical Storm Grace.
Aid has trickled in, but distributing food and getting urgent medical care to those in need is another matter amid the deep poverty, insecurity and lack of basic infrastructure that characterised Haiti before the back-to-back disasters.
A major hospital in the capital of Port-au-Prince, where injured from the earthquake zone in the southwestern peninsula were being sent, was closed for a two-day shutdown to protest the kidnapping of two doctors, including one of the country’s few orthopaedic surgeons.
The tension is increasingly evident in the area hit hardest by Saturday’s quake.
At the small airport in the southwestern town of Les Cayes, people thronged a perimeter fence Wednesday as aid was loaded into trucks and police fired warning shots to disperse a crowd of young men.
Angry crowds also massed at collapsed buildings in the city, demanding tarps to create temporary shelters after Grace’s heavy rain.
Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency late Wednesday raised the number of deaths from the earthquake to 2,189 and said 12,268 people were injured.
Dozens are still missing.
The magnitude 7.2 earthquake destroyed more than 7,000 homes and damaged more than 12,000, leaving about 30,000 families homeless, according to official estimates. Schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.
One of the first food deliveries by local authorities, a couple dozen boxes of rice and pre-measured, bagged meal kits, reached a tent encampment set up in one of the poorest areas of Les Cayes, where most of the one-story, cinderblock, tin-roofed homes were damaged or destroyed.
But the shipment was clearly insufficient for the hundreds who have lived under tents and tarps for days.
“It’s not enough, but we’ll do everything we can to make sure everybody gets at least something,” said Vladimir Martino, a camp resident who took charge of the distribution.
Gerda Francoise, 24, was one of dozens who lined up in the wilting heat for food.
“I don’t know what I’m going to get, but I need something to take back to my tent,” said Ms Francoise.
“I have a child.”
International aid workers said hospitals in the worst-hit areas are mostly incapacitated, requiring many to be moved to the capital for treatment.
But reaching Port-au-Prince from the southwest is difficult under normal conditions because of poor roads and gangs along the route.
Even with a supposed gang truce following the earthquake, kidnapping remains a threat, underscored by the seizure of the two doctors working at the private Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince, where about 50 quake victims were being treated.
The country’s prime minister Ariel Henry said Wednesday his administration will try not to “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid”, a reference to the chaos after the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, when the government and international partners struggled to channel help to the needy amid the widespread destruction and misery.
Meanwhile, the Core Group, a coalition of key international diplomats from the US and other nations that monitors Haiti, said in a statement that its members are “resolutely committed to working alongside national and local authorities to ensure that impacted people and areas receive adequate assistance as soon as possible.”
Distributing the aid to the thousands left homeless will be challenging.
“We are planning a meeting to start clearing all of the sites that were destroyed, because that will give the owner of that site at least the chance to build something temporary, out of wood, to live on that site,” said Serge Chery, head of civil defence for the Southern Province, which covers Les Cayes.
“It will be easier to distribute aid if people are living at their addresses, rather than in a tent.”
Mr Chery said an estimated 300 people are still missing.
While some officials have suggested an end to the search phase so that heavy machinery can clear the rubble, Mr Henry appeared unwilling to move to that stage.
“Some of our citizens are still under the debris. We have teams of foreigners and Haitians working on it,” he said.
He also appealed for unity.
“We have to put our heads together to rebuild Haiti,” Mr Henry said.
“The country is physically and mentally destroyed.”
Switzerland has sent a team of seven specialists to Haiti as the death toll from a recent earthquake tops the 2,000 mark.
The 7.2-magnitude earthquake that hit the southwestern part of the country on Saturday has also injured around 12,000 people and displaced thousands more.
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) team sent on Thursday consists of a logistician, two water and sanitation specialists, two structural engineers, a disaster area adviser and a team leader.
“Haiti is a priority country for the SDC, which immediately mobilised its staff on the ground – including architects, emergency shelter and disaster risk reduction specialists – to support the Haitian civil protection services in assessing needs,” read a press statementExternal link on Thursday.
Efforts are underway in Port-Salut and the Cayes district to deploy 3,250 tarpaulins and two drinking water distribution points of 5,000 litres in the areas that were at the epicentre of the earthquake.
Switzerland has also confirmed that it plans to spend CHF1 million ($1.1 million) to fund emergency relief, with half of this amount earmarked to support International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and United Nations activities.
The Catholic Church charity Caritas said on Thursday that it has raised CHF300,000 for the victims of the earthquake.
The Swiss authorities have not so far received any requests for support from Swiss citizens living in Haiti.
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