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Haitian civil protection announced on Monday a balance of 42 dead and 11 missing after floods and landslides in seven of the country’s ten departments. According to the UN, more than 13,000 people were displaced by bad weather, which also caused significant material damage.
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Haiti was the scene of heavy rains over the weekend, which caused flooding and left at least 42 dead and 11 missing, according to the Civil Protection report on Monday, June 5.
Bad weather has caused major flooding and landslides in seven of the country’s 10 departments, already mired in a humanitarian crisis fueled by gang violence.
According to the UN, which counts 15 dead and 8 missing, the rains affected 37,000 people and caused the displacement of 13,400. The city of Léogane, located 40 km southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince, was particularly hard hit, with damage caused by three flooding rivers.
At least 20 people died there, according to the first relief report. “The inhabitants are desperate. They have lost everything. The waters have devastated their fields, swept away their cattle,” Léogane mayor Ernson Henry told the AFP news agency.
Thousands of families were affected in their town, he also said, stressing that the population urgently needs food, drinking water and medicine.
Significant material damage These floods also caused extensive material damage throughout the country, destroying hundreds of homes and damaging several roads.
“Although it is not a cyclone or a tropical storm, the damage observed in the affected areas is considerable,” lamented Jean-Martin Bauer, coordinator of UN humanitarian action in Haiti, in a press release.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry activated the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) in response to weather contingencies. This highlights the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters and failures in terms of risk reduction, while the hurricane season is just beginning.
According to Ernson Henry, carrying out work in the river basins could have made it possible to limit the damage in Léogane. Even before these floods, Haiti was already facing a serious humanitarian crisis, with almost half of its population in need of humanitarian assistance, a number that has doubled in just five years, according to the UN.
