Lightning blows up the Belair powder magazine at Port-au-Prince

On 19 June 1817 a storm broke over Port-au-Prince; the lightning entered, it is believed, through the keyhole of the door of a large powder magazine that was situated in a sunken spot of the Belair, behind the church and a short distance from it. There were more than a hundred milliers of powder in it, which exploded: the whole city was shaken by it. The stones of the magazine, flying in fragments, fell in the streets, on the roofs of a crowd of houses, chiefly of the rue des Fronts-Forts, and even as far as the outer roadstead. The soldiers who were guarding the magazine all perished, victims of this unhappy event.

Rouzier tells this under the entry Belair.