22106: (Craig) NYT: Grief as Haitians and Dominicans Tally Flood Toll (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <hoosier@att.net>


Grief as Haitians and Dominicans Tally Flood Toll
May 28, 2004
By TIM WEINER and LYDIA POLGREEN

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, May 27 - Aid workers,
soldiers and villagers struggled to save the living, find
the lost and bury the dead in Haiti and the Dominican
Republic on Thursday after floods that took everything in
their path.

"We have nothing left," said Socorro Moquete, a 67-year-old
grandmother in Jimani, the most devastated town in the
Dominican Republic. "The river took everything, even the
dead in the cemetery."

Burials have been rough and rapid, and many hundreds of
people remained missing three days after the spring rains
made the rivers run wild. An accurate assessment of the
death and damage may take days.

Government officials in both nations said the confirmed
death toll from the devastating floods reached nearly 900
on Thursday. But they said it might go as high as 2,000,
with the greatest losses in Haiti, making it one of the
worst natural disasters in Caribbean history.

The death counts remain estimates from officials citing
conflicting and sometimes second-hand information. They
stood as high as 1,660 or more in Haiti, according to some
government officials, and were confirmed at more than 300
in the Dominican Republic.

A total of at least 11,200 families, probably more, have
been displaced by the flood in both nations, Red Cross
workers here said. Thousands of homes and shanties have
been destroyed in villages so poor and isolated that no one
is exactly sure how many people lived there before the
flood.

Two weeks of heavy rains, which continued Thursday, became
a deadly torrent at dawn on Monday. In Haiti, as much as
five feet fell in 36 hours on the town of Fond Verrettes,
in a valley about 40 miles east of the capital,
Port-au-Prince, officials said.

The rains washed away villages and hamlets clinging to the
deforested hills along the border separating the two
nations, which share the island of Hispaniola in the
Caribbean.

The death toll was so high, in part, because almost all the
trees on those hills are gone, and the soil is eroded,
leaving no natural barrier for the annual spring rains. The
trees have been cut for charcoal, the only product with
much market value in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's
poorest nation.

The two hardest-hit areas in Haiti are in and around Fond
Verrettes, where hundreds are dead and missing, and in and
around Mapou, to the southeast, where at least 280 people
are dead and as many as 1,000 are feared to have died,
according to conflicting accounts given by Haitian
officials.

International aid workers are still trying to reach towns
and villages in Haiti's southeast, including Bodarie,
Thiotte and Grand Gosier. Margareth Martin, the Haitian
government's representative for the southeast region,
placed the death toll in the Mapou area at 1,000 and said
that rescue efforts were nearly impossible there because
the roads were impassable.

Prime Minister Gerard Latortue planned to leave Haiti on
Thursday for a summit meeting of Latin American and
European Union nations in Guadalajara, Mexico, after
blaming deforestation for the magnitude of the disaster and
promising to create a forest protection unit made up of
former soldiers of the demobilized Haitian Army.

Just across the border in the Dominican Republic, more than
300 people are dead and 375 still missing in and around the
town of Jimani, where the river burst its banks at dawn
Monday, washed away hundreds of homes, killed cattle,
destroyed crops and displaced more than 1,000 families,
according to Dominican and Red Cross officials.

Jimani residents and local authorities said the death toll
might be higher, fearing that many people were buried under
the mud or had been washed down to Lago Enriquillo, a lake
about 19 miles to the southeast.

Jimani was a town of about 15,000. Now its diminished
population is seeking those who were lost, along with food,
drinking water and clothing.

What was the La Cuarenta neighborhood, its poorest area, is
now mud, rocks, branches and debris. Largely inhabited by
Haitians, it had been built in a riverbed that had been dry
for years.

La Cuarenta had several hundred small houses. All have been
washed away. Those who lived there are dead or missing.

"The river took my daughter and two granddaughters," said
Altagracia Recio, 54. "I lost everything."

The Dominican Republic's president, Hipolito Mejia, flew to
Jimani on Thursday for the first time since the disaster.
So did the United States ambassador, Hans H. Hertell, who
said, "This situation is grim, and we're looking at ways to
get more money here."

Promised aid to the victims includes $50,000 from the
United States, $42,000 from Canada, $100,000 from Japan and
$2.43 million from the European Union.

Family and local private aid has been faster than
international relief. Trucks and buses have been traveling
to Jimani since Tuesday with contributions from schools,
businesses and individuals.

Jiman? was filled with "Haitians who had fled their
country, many trying to make a living in a black market,
selling second-hand clothes," said Cristina Estrada, a
representative of the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies.

The Dominican Republic is poor, with a per capita income of
about $2,000 a year, but Haiti is far poorer. Its annual
per capita income is roughly $400.

And the floods in Haiti come at a difficult time, after an
uprising that left more than 200 people dead and helped
oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide this winter. A
government cobbled together with the help of the United
States remains nearly bankrupt, without many functioning
agencies.

Among those trying to aid the living are members of the
American-led multinational military force that occupied
Haiti after Mr. Aristide fled three months ago under
pressure from rebels and the United States government.

Lt. Col. David Lapan, a spokesman for the multinational
force, said United States marines had been flying
helicopters to Fond Verrettes and Mapou, in the
southeastern region of Haiti, for several days, ferrying
drinking water, food and plastic sheeting to shelter
thousands of people left homeless by the flooding.

Mapou, he and others reported, is gone. The town lay in a
valley now under as much as 10 feet of water rimmed by mud
and rubble.

"In Fond Verrettes, they used what little flat land they
had in the middle of this valley, which is what was
flooded," Colonel Lapan said. "A flash flood rolled through
the area, took what had been a dry streambed and expanded
it by a few hundred meters and took everything in its path,
and either swept it downstream or buried it right there."

The forecast called for more rain Friday, which could
hamper efforts to deliver relief supplies. Using about half
a dozen Marine helicopters, the interim force delivered
about 18,000 liters of water and 500 boxes of fruit and
bread, but flights may have to halt because of downpours,
Colonel Lapan said.

The roads between Port-au-Prince and the worst-off towns
remained impassable, making helicopters the only way to
transport food, water and shelter.

Officials at the United Nations World Food Program in Haiti
said they were struggling to get enough food for an
estimated 15,000 people who had to flee their homes.

"We are trying to react as quickly as possible," said Inigo
Alvarez-Miranda, a spokesman for the food program in
Port-au-Prince. "Even before this we were already operating
in a country in a deep crisis."

The program feeds 500,000 of Haiti's 8 million people. The
country's man-made misery has grown since the revolt that
toppled Mr. Aristide, Mr. ?lvarez said, and now this new
natural disaster has deepened Haiti's despair.

Tim Weiner reported from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic,
for this article, and Lydia Polgreen from New York.
Jean-Michel Caroit contributed reporting from the Dominican
Republic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/28/international/americas/28CARI.html?ex=1086720917&ei=1&en=0a2b2e8861a59705
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company