Haiti is shocked by an earthquake

Tens of thousands of people left homeless by the quake had to decide whether to brave the storm under flimsy tarpaulins or risk returning into buildings damaged by the tremor.

At least 1,419 people are known to have died in the 7.2-magnitude quake.

More than 6,900 were injured, and an unknown number are still missing.Rescue workers dug through rubble on Monday in a desperate attempt to find survivors before the heavy rains were able to turn the earth into cloying mud, making locating those buried even more difficult.

At 06:00 GMT Tuesday, Grace, which has been upgraded from a tropical depression to a tropical storm, was west of the city of Les Cayes and moving further westward towards Jamaica, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).Of the 1,297 fatalities, 1,054 are in the South administrative region, 119 are in Grand'Anse, 122 are in Nippes and two are in the Northwest region, the civil protection service reported on Sunday.

The quake destroyed 13,694 homes and damaged another 13,785, officials from the agency said. The destruction has also pushed hospitals to the brink and blocked roads that would carry vital supplies.The earthquake struck at 8:30 a.m. about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) deep, with its epicenter about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) northeast of Saint-Louis-du-Sud in the southwest part of the country. The location was about 96 kilometers (60 miles) west of the disastrous 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010 that killed an estimated 220,000 to 300,000 people.