Anger and despair rise in Haiti, one week after devastating quake

[August 21, 2021]  By Laura Gottesdiener and Ricardo Arduengo

MARCELINE, Haiti (Reuters) - Tensions in Haiti were rising on Saturday, one week after a devastating earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people, as scant aid has arrived in the remote regions of the impoverished Caribbean nation that were hit hardest.

Many Haitians whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed by the magnitude 7.2 quake that struck last Saturday morning said they were unsure how to even start rebuilding.

The official death toll from the earthquake stands at 2,189 people, with an estimated 332 people still missing. But residents in towns across the southern rural countryside are still digging for bodies believed to lie underneath the rubble.

Tens of thousands of homes are in ruins, leaving many families with no option but to sleep outside despite torrential downpours at night. The hurricane season in the Caribbean runs until the end of November and Prime Minister Ariel Henry has warned residents to brace for more storms.

"After the emergency phase, which we hope will only last a few weeks, we will need to start thinking about reconstruction," Henry told a meeting with the Organization of American States on Friday, appealing to neighboring countries for support and aid.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Twitter that the USS Arlington naval vessel was en route to Haiti carrying helicopters, a surgical team and a landing craft to assist in the relief effort. Several countries, including the United States, have already dispatched aid and rescue teams.

Reaching the areas most in need of help has been hindered by landslides and damage to the highway, as well as gang fighting that has complicated travel between the capital Port-au-Prince and southern parts of the country, however.

There, crops and access to drinking water were destroyed. Some animals kept for food were also killed.

Despair and frustration over the lack of aid began to boil over on Friday, with residents attacking aid trucks  in multiple towns across the south.

A resident searches through the rubble of destroyed houses, after the earthquake that took place on August 14th, in Marceline, near Les Cayes, Haiti August 20, 2021. REUTERS/Henry Romero

A confrontation also erupted after former President Michel Martelly visited a local hospital in the city of Les Cayes, where one of his staff left behind an envelope of money that set of a violent scramble.

Officials and residents in small towns and rural areas continued to tally the dead and disappeared. For countless others, the earthquake has upended their lives in quieter but enduring ways.

Manithe Simon, 68, stood in front of her collapsed home in Marceline on Friday, shocked at how quickly her honeymoon had turned into a nightmare.

Only days before the quake, Simon and Wisner Desrosier had finally decided to marry in a service in the nearby Baptist church. They had been together 44 years and raised four children together.

Now, the bedroom where she had posed for wedding photographs in a sleeveless white dress, flower petals decorating her bed, lay in a heap of concrete and twisted iron.

"Our wedding was so beautiful, even though it was raining cats and dogs that day," she said. "But now we have lost everything."

(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener and Ricardo Adurengo; Additional reporting by Robenson Sanon; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Sonya Hepinstall)

[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.