The death toll from a tanker explosion in Haiti on Tuesday has risen to 75, as more than a dozen people were seriously injured yesterday, the director of the Haitian Civil Protection said in a new update yesterday.
“Our latest report on the situation speaks of 75 dead, 47 critically injured and 12 milder, who are being treated in hospitals across the country,” Jerry Chandler, the country’s director of civil protection, told AFP. Caribbean.
“We are working intensively to strengthen local health structures: we are on track to complete the installation of our campaign hospital, which we anticipate will run for seven to ten days,” he added.
The temporary structure, which is being installed in the high school of Cap Aitien, the city where the tragedy unfolded, will work mainly thanks to the support of the World Health Organization and staff mobilized by the Haitian Ministry of Health, Jerry Chandler clarified.
On Monday night, a tanker driver trying to avoid a collision with a motorcycle lost control of the truck and the heavy vehicle overturned, Patrick Almonor, deputy mayor of Cap Aitien, explained on Tuesday.
“After the accident, ‘citizens took advantage to collect fuel, which they put in whatever container they could find,’ before there was a ‘terrible explosion,'” Jerry Chandler said.
As of Tuesday, some 20 injured people had been admitted to hospitals across the country, including the non-governmental organization Médecins sans frontières (MSF), the only health facility in Haiti with specialized staff and equipment for care.
“We have been performing surgeries all night and, at the moment, our 12 patients are in stable condition,” said Jean Gilbert Dong, MSF Medical Coordinator, yesterday morning.
“We are still waiting for about ten patients today, after being selected by an MSF team that went to the Cap yesterday. “The team consists of a burn-trained surgeon, an anesthesiologist and a nurse,” Dong said.
Haiti, an impoverished Caribbean country, has recently been plagued by paralyzing fuel shortages as gangs of thugs ransack parts of the supply network.
In recent months, heavily armed gangs have extended their control to areas of Port-au-Prince, including on the roads leading to the three oil-dependent oil plants across the country.
They have seized about ten tankers and are demanding huge ransoms to set the drivers free. The situation is causing increasing discomfort to the population.
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