Tensions grow in quake-hit Haiti as death toll tops 2,000​

Port-au-Prince, August 19 (RHC)-- Fresh tremors have shaken buildings in the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes, a few days after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake killed almost 2,200 people across the Caribbean nation and injured thousands more.

Tensions have been growing over the slow pace of aid reaching the victims of the powerful weekend earthquake, worsened by a drenching tropical depression that followed.  

At the small airport in Les Cayes, throngs of people gathered outside the fence on Wednesday when an aid flight arrived and crews began loading boxes into waiting trucks.  A small squad of Haitian police, outfitted in military-style uniforms and posted at the airport to guard the aid shipments, fired two warnings shots to disperse the crowd.
 
Angry crowds also massed at collapsed buildings in the city, demanding tarpaulins to create temporary shelters after Tropical Storm Grace brought heavy rain at the beginning of the week.

Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency late on Wednesday raised the number of deaths from the earthquake to 2,189 from an earlier count of 1,941 and said 12,268 people were injured.  Dozens of people are still missing.

The earthquake destroyed more than 7,000 homes and damaged more than 12,000 others, leaving about 30,000 families homeless, according to official estimates.  Schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged.  The Caribbean nation’s southwest region was the hardest hit.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry on Wednesday said his administration will work to not “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid,” a reference to the chaos that followed the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, when the government was accused of not getting all of the money raised by donors to the people who needed it.