In Haiti, heavy rains hit Haiti over the weekend, leaving at least 42 people dead and 11 missing, according to estimates released Monday by Civil Protection.

Heavy rains have caused widespread flooding and landslides in seven of the country’s 10 prefectures, which are already mired in an acute humanitarian crisis caused by gang violence.

According to the UN, which spoke of 15 deaths and 8 missing, 37,000 people were affected by the rains, and 13,400 people were forced to flee their homes.

The city of Leogane, located 40 km southwest of the capital Port-au-Prince, was particularly hard hit by the flooding of three rivers.

According to the latest count of emergency services, at least 20 of its inhabitants have died.

“People are in despair. They have lost everything. The waters destroyed their fields, drowned their animals,” Léogane Mayor Ernest Henri told AFP.

Thousands of families have been affected in the city, he said, stressing that they need food, drinking water and medicine.

The floods caused significant property damage throughout the country, destroying hundreds of homes and damaging roads.

“Although it was not a cyclone or a tropical storm, the damage caused to the affected areas is enormous,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, UN humanitarian coordinator for Haiti.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry has activated the National Emergency Operations Center.

The extraordinarily heavy losses show how vulnerable the region’s poorest country is to natural disasters and how big the shortcomings are in terms of risk reduction as the cyclone season has just begun.

According to Ernst Henri, if the work had been carried out in the catchment areas, the damage in Leogane would not have been so great.

Even before facing this catastrophe, Haiti was facing a very serious crisis, with nearly half of its population in need of humanitarian assistance, a number that doubled in just five years, according to the United Nations.

Source: RES-IPE