More Than 60 Killed and Dozens Injured in Haiti Gas Truck Explosion

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At least 50 people are dead in Haiti’s second largest city after an explosion involving a fuel tanker, a deputy mayor of Cap-Haïtien confirmed to the Miami Herald.

“We’ve already counted more than 50 dead,” Deputy Mayor Patrick Almonor said early Monday morning.

By afternoon, the death toll had risen to more than 60 with dozens of others seriously injured and scattered throughout hospitals in the northern region, according to Haiti’s Office of Civil Protection, which responds to disasters. Fearing more deaths, authorities raced to provide medical care to the injured and medically evacuate those in need of more urgent care.

The explosion occurred after midnight Monday in the Samarie district, at the eastern entrance to the city of Cap-Haïtien.

“Firefighters took turns trying to contain the blaze. For more than three hours, the flames were visible in almost every corner of the city,” the country’s daily, Le Nouvelliste, reported.

As panic ensued, the government deployed first responders, the United Nations helped set up a crisis center and prepped its helicopter and plane to transfer those in urgent need of care, and hospitals in Hinche, Mirebalais and Port-au-Prince prepared to receive the injured. The government also announced the deployment of a field hospital to the city to help increase its ability to respond.

Cap-Haïtien’s main public hospital, Justinien, received 47 burn victims, said Dr. Lauré Adrien, the director general of the health ministry. Another hospital, the Baptist Convention of Haiti, also had about a dozen patients with injuries, while victims were also received at other health facilities.

In most cases, all suffered from second and third-degree burns.

“Of the burn victims who went to Justinien Hospital, there were about 20... who had burns over 60% of their body and with third-degree burns,” Adrien said at an afternoon press conference in the city. “These were burns that the hospital did not have the capacity to manage by itself.”

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, which runs Haiti’s only burn center, sent a surgeon, nurse and anesthesiologist to Cap-Haïtien to assist and transfer those patients who are most critical, said MSF Medical Coordinator Jean-Gilbert Ndong.

“Roughly, we have 10 patients here and we are waiting for 14 more patients tomorrow because due to the time, we can’t send the plane,” Ndong. told the Herald from the charity’s burn/trauma center in Tabarre, where they were trying to double the 20 available beds for burn victims.

Ndong said MSF is working the World Food Program, which provided the U.N.’s only aircraft to fly in the team, and Haiti Air Ambulance and HERO, two U.S. nonprofits that provide airlifts for seriously injured patients.

“We have been working to deploy emergency personnel and emergency medical kits,” Bruno Lemarquis, the U.N.’s head humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, said in an interview. “We are helping with flights. We have one U.N. helicopter and plane and both have been busy since this morning. It’s a dreadful tragedy.”

Interim Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry said he was notified of the tragedy in the middle of the night and immediately deployed a team to the city. Taking to Twitter early Monday morning to confirm the explosion, he announced a period of mourning. He later visited, accompanied by several government ministers. Later, he also announced that the dead will be laid to rest in a national funeral.

“Three days of national mourning will be decreed throughout the territory, in memory of the victims of this tragedy that the entire Haitian nation is grieving,” tweeted Henry, a physician who was the director general of Haiti’s health ministry at the time of the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, and later its cholera epidemic.

Henry called the tragedy an example of misery and lack of education because “people do not pay attention to the danger that gasoline represents, and this is why we have the number of dead that we have.”



“A lot of people died inside their houses, without any idea of what had happened,” he said at a press conference.

“We want to say to the people of O’Kap,” Henry said, using the Creole name for the city, “we feel bad. We feel bad that all of these people died; all of these people were injured.“

As Henry toured the charred ruins of buildings and homes, authorities were still trying to determine the extent of the damages in the crowded city where homes are built close to one another. They were also trying to confirm exactly what led to the explosion as various stories circulated in the city about the cause.

Almonor, the deputy mayor, said the truck had overturned and afterward residents grabbed buckets and other containers to scoop up the spilled fuel.

Yvrose Pierre, who is also part of the three-member city council that runs the city, said the majority of the people killed in the explosion were people in the street trying to pillage the fuel after the tanker overturned. The tanker had just crossed the main bridge into the city when it tried to avoid hitting a motorcycle and overturned, she said.

“People came to get the fuel and the driver warned that the gas would explode,” she told the Herald. “After a few minutes, it exploded.”

At least 18 of the people who died were burned alive inside their homes, Pierre added.

By afternoon, local authorities had counted at least 62 deaths as bodies laid in the street covered with white sheets.

Pierre says the few hospitals in the city are in need of everything from gauzes to blood serum.

She blamed the tragedy on the country’s chronic unemployment and its recent fuel crisis.

“There is a lot of unemployment, no work, and people are trying to make do however they can,” she said.

The recent fuel blockade by armed gangs in the capital led to a shortage of gas, diesel and kerosene in the city, forcing Pierre and other officials to scramble to find the petroleum products. At the same time, it has led to Haitians stockpiling fuel at home to either use, or to sell amid the country’s surge in kidnappings and armed gang violence, and worsening economy.

“They were profiting from the accident to take gas to sell,” Pierre said. “If there was gas in the pumps like there should have been, they would not have tried to pillage the fuel from the tanker and we wouldn’t have had this tragedy.”

For nearly a month, a powerful gang coalition in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince crippled businesses and created nationwide panic with a blockade on fuel deliveries. With fuel trucks unable to get access to the only two ports where fuel deliveries arrive at, businesses and hospitals temporarily closed their doors, banks reduced hours and the U.S. and Canada warned their citizens to leave.

After the leader of the gang coalition announced a truce last month and said he would allow fuel tankers to access the port, deliveries slowly resumed but shortages in cities outside of the capital persisted.

Last week the government, which has subsidized fuel costs to the tune of more than $1 billion in lost revenue over a decade, finally raised the price of diesel, gasoline and kerosene. Henry announced at a press conference that the price of gasoline at the pump would increase 20% while the price of diesel nearly doubled.