LES CAYES, Haiti \u2014 Haitian officials raised the death toll from a deadly weekend earthquake by more than 500 on Tuesday after Tropical Storm Grace \u2026<\/b>
\nLES CAYES, Haiti \u2014 Haitian officials raised the death toll from a deadly weekend earthquake by more than 500 on Tuesday after Tropical Storm Grace forced a temporary halt to search and rescue efforts, a delay that fed growing anger and frustration among thousands who were left homeless. Grace battered southwestern Haiti, which was hit hardest by Saturday\u2019s quake, and officials warned some areas could get 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain before the storm moved on. Intermittent rain fell in the earthquake-damaged city of Les Caves and in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Late Tuesday afternoon, the Civil Protection Agency raised the death toll to 1,941 and the number of injured to 9,900, many of whom have had to wait for medical help lying outside in wilting heat. Patience was running out in the Western Hemisphere\u2019s poorest nation. Haitians already were struggling with the coronavirus, gang violence, worsening poverty and the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Mo\u00efse when the quake hit. Bodies continued to be pulled from the rubble, and the smell of death hung heavily over a pancaked, three-story apartment building. A simple bed sheet covered the body of a 3-year-old girl that firefighters had found an hour earlier. Neighbor Joseph Boyer,53, said he knew the girl\u2019s family. \u201cThe mother and father are in the hospital, but all three kids died,\u201d he said. The bodies of the other two siblings were found earlier. Illustrating the lack of government presence, volunteer firefighters from the nearby city of Cap-Hatien had left the body out in the rain because police have to be present before a body can be taken away. Another neighbor, James Luxama,24, repeated a popular rumor at many disaster scenes, saying that someone was sending text messages for help from inside the rubble. But Luxama had not personally seen or received such a message. A throng of angry, shouting men gathered in front of the collapsed building, a sign that patience was running out for people who have waited days for help from the government. \u201cThe photographers come through, the press, but we have no tarps for our roofs,\u201d said one man, who refused to give his name. The head of Haiti\u2019s office of civil protection, Jerry Chandler, acknowledged the situation. Earthquake assessments had to be paused because of the heavy rain, \u201cand people are getting aggressive,\u201d Chandler said Tuesday. Some children were orphaned in the quake and some youngsters were starting to go hungry, said Carl-Henry Petit-Fr\u00e8re, a field manager for Save the Children, which said in a statement that it was distributing what it could to people living on the streets without protection from the wind and rain. \u201cI see children crying on the street, people asking us for food, but we are low on food ourselves as well,\u201d Petit-Fr\u00e8re said, adding that children were warned not to go into houses because they could collapse. \u201cThe organizations that are here are doing what they can, but we need more supplies. Food, clean water and shelter are needed most, and we need them fast.\u201d About 20 soldiers finally showed up to help rescuers at the collapsed apartment building. Prior to that, the only help that arrived was from poorly equipped volunteers. \u201cAll we have are sledgehammers and hands. That\u2019s the plan,\u201d said Canadian volunteer Randy Lodder, director of the Adoration Christian School in Haiti. Sarah Charles, assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development\u2019s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, said its disaster response teams were forced to suspend operations as the storm arrived Monday, but members were back Tuesday to assess its impact and continue helping. \u201cWe do not anticipate that the death toll related to this earthquake will be anywhere near the 2010 earthquake, where more than 200,000 people were killed,\u201d Charles told reporters. The scale of the damage also was not as severe as that earthquake, she said, adding: \u201cThat\u2019s not what we\u2019re seeing on the ground right now.\u201d In a statement, the U.S. military\u2019s Southern Command said it was moving eight helicopters from Honduras to Haiti and that seven U.S. Coast Guard cutters were en route to support the USAID team. Two cutters already are there along with two Coast Guard helicopters and U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft that are taking aerial images of earthquake devastated areas, the statement said. The effort was being mounted \u201cto provide the kind of emergency response that is necessary in a human tragedy and catastrophe like this,\u201d U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at the White House. John Morrison, public information officer for the Fairfax Co. (Virginia) Urban Search and Rescue, said its team was still trying to find survivors. Two U.S. Coast Guard helicopters had ferried searchers to six stricken communities on Monday. \u201cThe team reports that food, health care services, safe drinking water, hygiene and sanitation and shelter are all priority needs,\u201d Morrison said. He also noted, \u201cwe have not yet found any signs of persons alive trapped in buildings.\u201d The rain and wind raised the threat of mudslides and flash flooding as Grace slowly passed over southwestern Haiti\u2019s Tiburon Peninsula before heading toward Jamaica and southeastern Cuba. Forecasters said it could become a hurricane before hitting Mexico\u2019s Yucatan Peninsula. Officials said the magnitude 7.2 earthquake destroyed more than 7,000 homes and damaged nearly 5,000, leaving about 30,000 families homeless. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were demolished or badly damaged. In the village of Bonne Fin, a one-hour drive from Les Cayes on dirt roads, the mountaintop Hospital Lumiere illustrated the anguish and complexity of Haiti\u2019s medical crisis and dire need for outside help. No one died or was injured at the hospital when the quake hit, but the operating rooms partially collapsed. Through cracks in a wall, Dr. Frantz Codio could see three glistening anesthesia machines he needed to perform orthopedic operations on broken bones. But he could not get to them because the building\u2019s cement floor was leaning at a crazy angle \u2014 in some places just 3 or 4 feet (0.9 meters to 1.2 meters) above where it used to be. Despite warnings not to go inside the structure, Codio did so on Sunday and pulled one of the machines out. \u201cPeople said, \u2018Don\u2019t go in there, it\u2019s too dangerous,\u2019 but I had God with me,\u201d Codio said. Etzer Emile, a Haitian economist and professor at Quisqueya University, a private institution in Port-au-Prince, said the earthquake will almost certainly result in more long-term poverty for Haiti\u2019s struggling southwestern region. Political instability and gang criminality along the southern roads into the region have particularly hobbled economic activity in recent years. \u201cThe earthquake has just given a fatal blow to a regional economy already on its knees for about 2 1\/2 years\u201d Emile said.<\/p>\n