Worshipers at Église de Dieu in Levine — a neighborhood in Maniche, Haiti — hold a prayer service in the church’s courtyard early Sunday, Aug. 15, nine days after the 7.2 earthquake hit the south of Haiti. A seven-year-old girl died when a wall of the church toppled onto her while she was fleeing for safety.
“It was a tragic death,” said Pastor Garry François standing at the site of the destroyed church. “All the churches and houses in Lévine, Maniche have been destroyed. I have to do the service outside.”
Maniche is a village in the Maniche commune of the Les Cayes rural area in the South Department of Haiti.
The quake struck at 8:29 a.m. ET on Aug. 14, about five miles from the town of Petit-Trou-de-Nippes in Haiti’s southwest peninsula and 78 miles west of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. Shocks were felt as far away as 200 miles in Jamaica, according to the United States Geological Survey.