Haiti flood death toll rises
Date: 23-Sep-04
Country: HAITI
Author: Joseph Guyler Delva
Tropical Storm Jeanne swept north of Haiti during the weekend, drenching the impoverished Caribbean nation of 8 million, inundating cities and sending deadly mudslides through towns and villages.
"According to reports received this morning from the spokesman for the U.N. mission in Haiti, more than 600 people have died in the northern city of Gonaives and its surroundings, while over 1,000 are unaccounted for," chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters at the United Nations.
Relief supplies started to reach the worst-hit areas this week, but the pace was slowed by waterlogged roads and worries about security in a country that is still unstable after an armed revolt ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February.
Government officials gave a death toll of 662, mostly from the swamped coastal city of Gonaives. The toll was likely to rise as relief workers reached areas isolated by the floods.
"As the water recedes we begin to see bodies emerge from the mud," said Fernando Arroyo, a U.N. official in Gonaives. "There are bodies scattered on the roads, in the streets."
The dead were to be buried in mass graves as soon as heavy machinery arrived, to avert an outbreak of disease, he said.
"I lost five people in the floods and I don't have anything, no water, no food, nothing," said one stunned Gonaives resident, Mercidieu Pierre-Andre, 49.
Water was still waist-high in places and mud on the windows of homes illustrated a desperate tale of rising water that sent people clambering on to their roofs to survive.
The World Food Program sent 12 trucks with 40 tons of food to Gonaives and hoped to start handing it out by Wednesday after ensuring that distribution points would be secure, said regional WFP spokesman Alejandro Chicheri.
Eckhard said drinking water was urgently needed in a region engulfed with mud. Thousands of people were in shelters, some 600 of them finding refuge in the cathedral in Gonaives.
RISING DEATH TOLL
Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is chronically vulnerable to flooding because widespread deforestation has stripped the topsoil from its hills and mountains. Flooding in May killed about 2,000 people.
U.N. forces maintaining the peace after Aristide's departure were helping with rescue efforts and providing transport for relief shipments.
The hospital in Gonaives was flooded and only small amounts of medical supplies had reached the city so far, Eckhard said. Much of the care to the injured was being provided by a medical team with Argentine peacekeepers.
Gonaives residents recounted clinging to trees to survive or seeing their relatives die before their eyes.
"The water started to grow high, but we never thought it was going to get so high," said Josephine Mesadieu, 20. "Then it started to get up to our necks, then I had to swim. My younger brother and sisters could not do so, they died."
Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue visited flooded areas of Gonaives and the northern city of Port-de-Paix, and pledged to provide all possible aid.
"We don't have much means but we'll bring what we have," Latortue told a group of Port-de-Paix residents.
At the United Nations, interim President Boniface Alexandre appealed for world aid at the opening of the annual General Assembly session in New York.
Tropical Storm Jeanne also killed 11 people in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and two in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
Jeanne, now a hurricane with 90 mph (150 kph) winds, drifted in the Atlantic 515 miles (825 km) east of the Bahamas' Great Abaco Island this week. Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said it posed no immediate threat to land.
