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3 killed in quake collapse in northern Haiti: UN
A small earthquake struck northern Haiti, collapsing an apartment building and killing at least three people, a UN spokesman said.
A small earthquake struck northern Haiti, collapsing an apartment building and killing at least three people, a UN spokesman said.
Residents said the tremor struck Haiti's second-largest city of Cap-Haitien shortly after midnight on Sunday, collapsing the four-story building. Some nearby structures were damaged by the collapse but no other quake effects were reported.
Three survivors were pulled out of the rubble and taken to a hospital, UN spokesman Louicius Euguene said.
Haitian police, civil protection authorities and UN peacekeepers from Chile and Nepal found the body of another person killed inside.
Cap-Haitien lies along the fault line that produced three moderate earthquakes in nearby Cuba on Saturday. It was not affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, some 130 kilometres to the south.
Witnesses said it had been raining, which could have weakened the ground under the structure.
US Geological Survey scientists were studying data yesterday for signs of the temblor but had no confirmation of the earthquake. A small, 3.7-magnitude aftershock was felt in Port-au-Prince late Saturday night.
"We don't really see anything that is jumping out of the records but ... we're looking at this," geophysicist Rafael Abreu said.
