CAMP PERRIN, Hait — An hour's drive from Haiti's southern coast, only
a sign remains indicating where the district of Marceline stood until every
last house crumbled in Saturday's
earthquake — the latest blow to an area that
is no stranger to natural disaster.
اضافة اعلان
Tragedy has cast a long pall over life in Haiti's southwest corner, which
suffered a humanitarian crisis in October 2016 when Hurricane Matthew caused
catastrophic damage, leveling an estimated 200,000 homes and killing hundreds.
"When Matthew passed, the roof of my house was carried away.
It was
through a Canadian organization that I was able to rebuild it," said
Bertha Jean Louis, standing Tuesday in front of her now-destroyed sheet metal
dwelling.
Nothing remains of the 43-year-old's life save a heap of concrete, broken
furniture, and tattered linens.
Neither her house nor her mother's withstood
the shaking that devastated their community, near the city of Camp Perrin.
On either side of the road that crosses the southern peninsula, buildings
crumbled under the force of the 7.2 magnitude earthquake, with few exceptions.
"We need help finding a house. That's all, Then we can make do, we're
used to it, We'll work the land and that will sustain us," Jean Louis
said.
Her voice, energetic and assertive, reveals little of the recent tragedy
that has befallen her: a 35-year-old brother who died in the collapse of their
shared home, the hospitalization of her husband with injuries to both legs, the
fact that she is now tending to her 75-year-old mother alone while four months
pregnant.
"Since Saturday, I've been wearing the same dress.
I can't risk going
under the rubble to save anything. I just wash my underwear, and when it's dry,
I wash my dress, that's how I do it because I have nothing saved," she
explained.
"I'm totally discouraged, but I know that the Good Lord will send us
aid from another country, like what happened after Matthew.
That's why I still
have hope."
'I would flee'
Her neighbor, who also lost everything, is already hard at work building a
tin shelter in front of what remains of his house.
"After Matthew, I took in a lot of people.
I welcomed them here because
the whole neighborhood was destroyed. But today, I can't do anything for them
because I too am in the street," said Claude Altime.
When Matthew walloped Haiti in 2016 it left a trail of death and
destruction: more than 500 people killed and nearly $2 billion in damage.
The storm hit with the country still recovering from a massive 2010 tremor
that devastated the capital Port-au-Prince and left nearby cities in ruins,
killing more than 200,000.
This week should have been an occasion for celebration.
Altime's two
youngest children, age 4 and 11, celebrated their birthdays. But the family was
sunk too deep in despair.
"If I could find a place to disappear to and leave this area, I would
flee, because I suffered Matthew and now I suffer this.
I had never seen an
earthquake in my life," he said.
On Tuesday a new weather system, Tropical Storm Grace, brought the
all-too-familiar threat of torrential rain to the country.
In the downpour Altime is trying to eke out, under a few pieces of sheet
metal fixed to frail wooden poles, a daily existence for his wife and their
four children, as well as for his octogenarian father whose house collapsed not
far away.
.jpg)
.jpg)
