The Haitian Times
www.hatiantimes.com
JACMEL — A powerful fire tore through one side of the Beaudouin supermarket in the early morning of Apr. 19, burning through goods and leaving scores of vendors and customers devastated.
The supermarket inferno erupted very early in the morning and quickly spread to one side, according to residents, completely destroying it. Area residents said they watched in disbelief as the blaze took hold.
Firefighters later arrived to battle the blaze, keeping it from spreading further to the rest of Beaudouin Market, the largest in the southeastern Haiti town.
Marie Michelle Charles, who buys food at the market wholesale to resell, came to the market to buy from a seller when she saw one side of the market burning.
“We’re dead. How will we live with all these deficits,” Charles said, as tears rolled from her eyes.
One day before the fire, vendor Clairsilia Jeudy bought sugar worth 100,000 gourdes, about USD $921, to resell that has since been lost in the fire. She too was in tears.
“I heard the news on the radio at 4 a.m. this morning,” Jeudy said. “I came with my sister to check, I am speechless seeing all this. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The cause of the fire and the number of victims, if any, were not known at this time.
