Early Saturday, Judeline Louis, a Port-au-Prince native, received a frantic call from her daughter, who lives in Haiti. "'Mom, there was an earthquake. Mom, the houses are crumbling again,'" her daughter told her over the phone. The call came minutes after news spread that a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck a small town in western Haiti, Louis said. The death toll more than doubled Sunday. Haiti's civil protection agency said at least 1,297 were dead and at least 2,800 injured, and that more than 7,000 homes were destroyed and nearly 5,000 damaged.
Louis moved to New York City five years after experiencing the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010. After that "nightmare," she said, she had hoped her family would never experience an earthquake again. Louis said she couldn't reach her daughter again after that harrowing phone call. "I just want to hear her voice again. I'm sad for my country. ... I can't believe another earthquake is devastating us again,”
Haitians were already contending with the assassination of their president, Jovenel Moïse, last month, as well as instability because of gang violence and surges in coronavirus infections. The country still had not fully recovered from the 2010 quake. Yet the devastation could soon worsen with the coming of Tropical Depression Grace, which is predicted to reach Haiti on Monday night. The U.S. National Hurricane Center demoted the tropical storm to a depression Sunday, but forecasters warned that regardless, Grace still posed a threat to bring heavy rain, flooding and landslides.
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