As Grace made landfall in Haiti, the authorities were still rushing to bring aid to the country’s southwest, which was devastated in the deadly earthquake just two days earlier.
The quake has killed more than 1,400 people and injured nearly 7,000 others — a toll that is expected to rise. Thousands of homes have been destroyed, as well as dozens of schools, churches and health centers, according to reports by local authorities.
Memories of the crippling 2010 earthquake — and the shambolic humanitarian response that followed — are still vivid in the minds of Haitians, and the government has promised a more effective reaction this time. But the shipping of aid to the southwest has been hampered by logistical issues and medical facilities are lacking in that part of the country.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry said on Sunday that all aid received by the country would be handled by a single operations center in Port-au-Prince to avoid having humanitarian assistance arrive “in disorder,” as it often did in 2010, leaving many people excluded from rescue efforts.
In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, the country earned the nickname “The Republic of NGOs” after nongovernmental organizations became the main channel for humanitarian assistance, essentially filling the void left by weak government institutions.
Several countries, like Mexico, have flown aid to Haiti in recent days and the United States has sent a search-and-rescue team. On Tuesday, the European Union announced that it was allocating 3 million euros, about $3.5 million, in humanitarian funding to help affected communities.
“The E.U. is quickly mobilizing support to this already extremely fragile country, where hurricanes and heavy rainfalls aggravate the dire situation even more,” Janez Lenarcic, the bloc’s commissioner for crisis management, said in a statement.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/world/americas/haiti-hurricane-storm.html
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