At least 42 dead and thousands displaced after floods in Haiti

At least 42 people were killed and thousands displaced after a weekend of heavy rain and widespread flooding in Haiti, the country’s capital. disaster relief agency said Monday.

The heavy rainfall, which fell mainly on Saturday and Sunday, flooded more than 13,000 homes and displaced people across Haiti, the agency said. It also said 85 people were injured and 11 were missing after the floods.

As aid workers rushed to provide food, drinking water and shelter to those affected, western parts of the Caribbean country appeared to have suffered the most from the heavy rains.

In western parts of Haiti, more than 5,000 homes were affected by rain and flooding, displacing more than 2,500 people, the agency said in a statement. update on Sunday. In the central region, it said the agricultural sector was “deeply affected”.

Videos circulating on social media showed dramatic scenes over the weekend as heavy flooding made some roads look like flowing rivers with vehicles floating away.

Jean-Martin Bauer, the acting humanitarian coordinator for Haiti at the United Nations, said in a rack on Monday that numerous schools and other buildings were damaged, particularly in the western and northwestern regions of Haiti.

“While this is not a cyclone or tropical storm, significant damage has been observed in affected areas,” said Mr. Bauer.

At one press conference on Sunday, the Acting Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, thanked the volunteers of the Disaster Response Service for their work. He continued Twitter that federal agencies worked to meet the “demands of the day”.

The widespread flooding is the latest blow to a country that has become all too familiar with natural disasters, most notably a magnitude 7 earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people and destroyed much of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, destroyed.

Since then, Haiti has struggled to recover from the massive impact the earthquake had on the country’s economy and infrastructure, while facing other natural disasters. In August 2021, more than 1,900 people were killed in Haiti after the country was hit by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake, which was followed just two days later by heavy rain from a tropical depression.

“I am particularly concerned about this situation at a time when the Haitian people are already very vulnerable,” said Mr. Bauer Monday, adding that the floods came “at a time when the country is facing a major humanitarian crisis”.

Even before this weekend’s rain and flooding, nearly half of Haiti’s population, about 5.2 million people, was in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations.