22077: (Chamberlain) Dominican, Haiti floods death toll rises (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Manuel Jimenez

     SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, May 26 (Reuters) - Rescue workers
dug through mud and debris for bodies as the death toll from devastating
floods and landslides in the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti
climbed to more than 600 on Wednesday.
     Several hundred more people were missing after Monday's rivers of mud
and swirling waters smashed houses in their path. The flooding followed
days of torrential rain on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola that the two
countries share.
     In the devastated Dominican town of Jimani, rescue workers wore
surgical masks and residents held handkerchiefs to their noses to ward off
the stench of decomposing flesh as they used shovels and sticks to dig
through mud and rubble for corpses.
     Bulldozers dug holes to bury the dead where they were found, in ground
where buildings stood a few days ago.
     Officials in the Dominican Republic said the death toll had risen to
250, with almost all of the dead in Jimani, near the Haitian border where a
river overflowed its banks before dawn and swept homes away as people
slept.
     In Haiti, the death toll was about 360.
     The dead included 158 at Fond Verettes, a town that was devastated by
a river of mud, 200 in the southeast region and two in the south, at
Port-a-Piment, Haitian Justice Minister and acting Interior Minister
Bernard Gousse told Reuters.
     "We are sending shelters and food supplies to affected areas," said
Gousse, who toured Fond Verettes on Tuesday.
     In the area near the town of 40,000, floodwaters flattened fields of
crops and ripped apart crude shacks fashioned from sticks and sheets of
iron. Roads were littered with chunks of rock and gravel.
     Residents pulled furniture and other belongings from the streets,
where they had been swept by the flood, and assembled mud-caked possessions
in stacks along the sides of the roads. The floods toppled a cross near a
Voodoo temple.
     Troops from a U.S.-led peacekeeping force in Haiti were helping relief
efforts. On Tuesday, the force flew 18,000 liters (4,737 gallons) of
bottled water, 500 boxes of fruit and another 500 of bread by helicopter to
hungry residents of Fond Verettes.
     The storm washed out the winding mountainside road from Port-au-Prince
to Fond Verettes, leaving helicopters as the only means of transport to the
town. Officials said it could take months to rebuild the road.
     The disaster was a blow to Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas
where the population of 8 million struggles for food and shelter. Four out
of five people live in poverty and only a quarter of Haitians has access to
safe drinking water.
     The peacekeeping force, numbering about 3,500 foreign troops, was sent
to Haiti to try to restore order after an armed revolt forced out former
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February, the latest chapter in a long
history of political upheaval in the country.
     In the Dominican Republic, a country of 8.5 million people that is
more prosperous than its neighbor but still has areas of deep poverty,
relief workers and supplies of medicines, food, blankets were pouring into
the Jimani area.
     Dogs trained to sniff out bodies were sent to join the recovery
effort. Relief workers wearing surgical masks hauled bodies on stretchers,
while rescuers hacked through the rubble of stick shacks with hatchets
searching for victims.
     Some of the dead were found clinging to trees. Others were found still
inside homes that had been shunted along by the tide of mud and water.
     Army tents sprang up to shelter dozens of Dominican soldiers sent to
help with relief efforts. A stream of helicopters flew in from the capital
and trucks ferried wood to rebuild homes. A fire truck was used to clean
mud from the local hospital.
     More than 100 bodies were buried in a common grave in Jimani on
Tuesday. Health officials worried about diseases breaking out and urged
quick burials.
     Radhames Lora Salcedo, director of the Civil Defense department, said
that some 239 people were listed missing. But local residents believed the
number of people unaccounted for could be as many as 500.
     The European Union was preparing a package worth two million euros
($2.43 million) for flood victims, the European Commission said in
Brussels.

  (Additional reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince and Daniel
Morel in Jimani)