12185: Haiti-Rain (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By MICHAEL NORTON

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 27 (AP) -- Torrential rains pounded Haiti for a
fourth day Monday, causing flooding and landslides and killing at least 10
people.
   Almost 100 people were left homeless in the southern peninsula of this
Caribbean nation, officials said. Heavy rains have battered the eroded
hills since Friday, carrying away people, their houses and livestock, and
destroying fields.
   Country roads were cut off and bridges swept away when streams
overflowed their banks from Les Cayes, about 95 miles southwest of the
capital, to Anse D'Hainault, on the tip of the peninsula, about 140 miles
west of the capital.
   On Friday, two men drowned when they tried to swim across the swollen
river at Port-a-Piment, about 19 miles west of Les Cayes. Others died when
their houses, built on eroded river banks, collapsed. Ten bodies were
recovered; it is not clear how many others were missing.
   The rains are likely to continue until Thursday, said meteorologist
Renan Jean-Louis.
   Rains also pounded Jamaica this week, causing at least five deaths and
widespread damage throughout the central parishes of Clarendon, St. Ann's
and St. Catherine. The rains there were expected to continue through
Wednesday.