Photos: Bringing Hope to the Aftermath of Haiti’s Earthquake

At 8:29 a.m. on August 14, residents in southern Haiti were rocked by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake, the biggest to hit the island in more than a decade. By the time it was over, at least 2,248 people had been killed, 12,000 were injured, and 136,800 buildings were destroyed.

It was a devasting blow for a nation still recovering from previous disasters like the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew. With health needs widespread, Project HOPE immediately deployed an Emergency Response Team to Haiti to support the nation’s health care workers and communities. Now that the scale of damage is clear, we’re staying to support clinics across southern Haiti as they rebuild in the months to come.

The stories of loss in Haiti are profound. But so is the resilience of the island’s people — and their will to build back stronger.

Providing immediate care after a disaster often requires creative solutions. Roads can be impassible, buildings unusable, and transportation hard to secure. Transferring patients can require an entire team. Sometimes a tent becomes an urgent care clinic, or a school bus becomes an ambulance.

A week after the earthquake, Project HOPE team members helped transfer three patients onto a helicopter for transfer to Les Cayes, including a man who had been buried beneath a landslide for seven days. “With the help of volunteers at the clinic … we were able to make a safe route through the crowd and evacuate all three patients to the helicopter,” says Obenson Amazan, a member of our team in Haiti. “At 1:25 p.m., they finally left, on their way to Hospital General des Cayes so they can receive proper care.”

The immediate aftermath of an earthquake doesn’t always tell the whole story. Destroyed homes and shattered buildings show the scale of need, but they don’t capture the private wounds that survivors often feel. They can’t capture the pain of losing photos of your children, or the uncertainty of what comes next.

After a major disaster, direct medical care isn’t the only care that’s needed. Survivors need clean water, hygiene items, and medicines for chronic conditions. But they also need support for the grief others cannot see: the heavy toll a disaster like this has on their mental health.

Project HOPE’s work in Haiti now focuses on restoring basic primary health services to earthquake-affected communities across the Sud, Grand’Anse, and Nippes departments.

“This has, of course, been very traumatic for everyone here. It continues to be traumatic,” says Cora Nally, who helped lead our initial response. “The first night after we arrived in Les Cayes, there was an aftershock. It was not a very big one, but every time an incident like that happens it retraumatizes everyone, so mental health is very important right now in Les Cayes and across Haiti. All of the people we have spoken with have asked for mental health specialists and mental health professionals to come.”

To learn more about Project HOPE’s response and how you can help, click here.