New Haiti disaster: Fireball from toppled tanker kills 75

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AP) — With fuel in short supply all across Haiti, some neighbors in the northern city of Cap-Haitien saw the crash of a tanker truck as a chance to scoop up valuable spilled gasoline. But then the truck exploded, unleashing a fireball that swept across people and homes, and local officials say at least 75 people died.

Early reports indicate that the tanker was trying to avoid an oncoming motorcycle when it veered and flipped early Tuesday.

Onlookers then rushed to the scene with buckets to collect what they could of the tanker’s cargo, likely for sale on the black market, as the fuel drained toward a nearby pile of smoldering trash.

“It was after midnight and I heard a loud noise so I asked one of my boys to go and look. He told me a gasoline truck exploded,” said Abraham Joanis, 61, as he carried a guitar rescued from the charred remains of his home, one of about 50 gutted by the blaze.

Hours after the blast, buildings and overturned vehicles were still smoking as firefighters covered burned bodies in white sheets and loaded them onto the back of a construction truck.

“It’s horrible what happened,” said Patrick Almonor, deputy mayor of Cap-Haitien, the country's second-largest city, who said late Tuesday that 75 people had died.. “We lost so many lives.”

Burn victims screamed in agony as they pleaded for help at Justinian University Hospital, the city's largest.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry, himself a physician, visited there as victims bandaged head to toe were fighting for their lives amid a shortage of medical supplies and health workers in an impoverished nation that has been bombarded by disasters in recent months — riots, a wave of kidnappings, a powerful earthquake that killed more than 2,200 people and the July 7 assassination of the...