The toll in the earthquake that hit Haiti increased to 14, reported Reuters on Monday. The 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the northwest coast of Haiti late on Saturday. Its epicentre was about 19 km northwest of the city of Port-de-Paix, the United States Geological Survey had said.
Eight people died in Port-de-Paix on the northern coast near the epicenter, according to unidentified officials. Four, including a woman who died from a heart attack after the quake, were killed in and around the town of Gros-Morne in the south. Another person was killed in a house collapse in the town of Chansolme and one other person in Saint-Louis-du-Nord.
At least 152 people were injured in Port-de-Paix and 30 wounded in Gros-Morne, said an unidentified local government representative. Air ambulances were used to transport the seriously injured to the capital city of Port-au-Prince.
On Sunday, an aftershock of magnitude 5.2 hit the country, reported AP. The epicentre was situated 15.8 kilometres north-northwest of Port-de-Paix, according to the US Geological Survey. “It was an aftershock. It was at the same location,” Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey, told The Washington Post. “This is the first significant aftershock.”
President Jovenel Moise asked international aid agencies to coordinate with local agencies for better relief operations and urged people to donate blood. He visited Port-de-Paix on Sunday and said that supplies of food and drinking water were already being sent to the affected cities. Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant was also overseeing rescue operations, said Moise.
A 7.1-magnitude earthquake killed an estimated 220,000 to 300,000 people in the Caribbean nation in January 2010. Tens of thousands of people are still displaced because of the earthquake.
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