“I was going into the garden to pick some bananas to eat, when there was something telling me not to leave my blind mother at home. I took her hand and made her sit on a chair in the garden a few meters from the house. I felt the earth shaking under my feet and I started to call for help. The next thing I saw was my mother and my daughter on the ground. I ran towards the house and I saw that the wall had collapsed on my mother’s bed and onto other parts of the house.”

Marie Dieula told ActionAid Haiti that she “felt a great shock in my heart when I saw that the walls of my house had fallen to the ground.” Marie, her husband and four children are sleeping in the courtyard of their home in very difficult conditions, with no bed, adequate heating equipment, drinking water or hygiene products. They are hungry and traumatised.

ActionAid has set up an emergency fundraising appeal to help teams on the ground in the worst affected areas of Jérémie and Les Cayes respond to people’s most urgent needs.

ActionAid knows that women and girls often suffer the most during humanitarian emergencies. Typically, more women than men are killed by rapid onset disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes, and violence against women and girls increases during all emergencies.