End of Mission Report: United Nations Disaster Assessment & Coordination (UNDAC) Earthquake – Haiti (August 15 - 24 September 2021)

Background Information on the emergency

1.1. Description of disaster

On 14 August at 8:30 am local time, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the south-western coast of Haiti causing large-scale damage across the country’s southern peninsula. The powerful 10 km deep earthquake occurred 13km southeast of Petit-Troude-Nippes, in the department of Nippes, the same region devastated by Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Only two days after the quake, Tropical Depression Grace dumped extremely heavy rains in southern Haiti, causing flooding in the same quake-affected areas.

Haitian Prime Minister has declared a national state of emergency. On 16 August, the Government of Haiti sent a request for international assistance. Offers to support national response efforts arised from governments across Latin America and the Caribbean. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the UN system worked closely with the Government and other actors to ensure an efficient, well-targeted and principled humanitarian response for those most in need. Communication from the Government of Haiti was to the NGOs willing to provide assistance to the affected population, to ensure order in the cooperation through local structures.

The back-to-back disasters exacerbated pre-existing vulnerabilities. At the time of the earthquake, Haiti was still reeling from the 7 July assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and facing an escalation in gang violence since June that has affected 1.5 million people, with at least 19,000 displaced in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince. The compounded effects of an ongoing political crisis, socio-economic challenges worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity and gang violence continued to greatly worsen an already precarious humanitarian situation. Previous to the earthquake, the Humanitarian Needs Overview 2021 in Haiti (HNO), identified some 4.4 million people, or nearly 46 per cent of the population, face acute food insecurity, including 1.2 million who are in emergency levels (IPC 4) and 3.2 million people at crisis levels (IPC Phase 3). An estimated 217,000 children suffer from moderate-to-severe acute malnutrition.

1.2. Impact

Despite being much less catastrophic than the 2010 earthquake which left more than 220,000 people dead and 1.5 million injured, the impact of the 14 August earthquake has been devastating. According to the latest reports issued by the Haitian Civil Protection on 21 August, the death toll has now surpassed 2,200 with more than 12,200 people injured. Almost 53,000 homes have been destroyed and more than 77,000 have sustained damage. About 800,000 people have been affected and an estimated 650,000 people – 40 per cent of the 1.6 million people living in the affected departments – are in need of emergency humanitarian assistance.

The most affected departments include Sud, Grand’Anse, and Nippes. The arrondissements of Les Cayes, Aquin, Cavaillon, Petite-Rivière-de-Nippes, and Anse-à-Veau, in particular, were exposed to severe shaking (level VIII on the modified Mercalli intensity scale).