22089: (Chamberlain) Town death toll feared to be nearly 1,000 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By AMY BRACKEN
 and
 PETER PRENGAMAN

   FOND VERRETTES, Haiti, May 27 (AP) -- Health officials feared up to
1,000 people could be dead in a single Haitian town from floods that wiped
out villages across Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a figure that would
nearly double the death toll from the disaster.
   As search crews worked to recover bodies from devastated towns and
villages in the two countries that share the island of Hispaniola, U.S.-led
troops delivered bread, fruit and bottled water, and international aid
employees fanned out to assess the damage.
   The death toll was about 950, but the number was expected to jump. In
the Haitian town of Mapou, as many as 1,000 people could be dead, said
Margarette Martin, the government's representative for the southeast region
in nearby Jacmel. Only about 300 bodies had been counted so far, said Dr.
Yvon Lavissiere, the health director for the region.
   Martin said officials believed hundreds more may have died because
houses were submerged and rescuers saw bodies underwater that they were
unable to retrieve.
   The town of several thousand people, located 30 miles southeast of the
capital of Port-au-Prince, is still isolated by mud and landslides. The
town is in a valley that often floods when it rains.
   In the Haitian border village of Fond Verrettes, meanwhile, U.S. and
Canadian troops handed out food to hundreds of survivors who lined up
seeking help.
   Troops in the U.S.-led force were sent to stabilize Haiti after
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's ouster on Feb. 29. Since then the new
interim government has struggled to provide even basic services. Left
bankrupt, the government has scant resources to deal with natural
disasters.
   Rains over the weekend lashed the island of Hispaniola, sweeping away
entire villages Monday.
   At least 417 bodies had been recovered in the Dominican Republic, and
officials said some 400 were missing.
   Of more than 450 bodies recovered in Haiti, about 100 were found in the
southern town of Grand Gosier, said Civil Protection Director Marie Alta
Jean-Baptiste. Fifty more corpses were found elsewhere in Haiti, officials
said.
   In Fond Verrettes, more than 158 people were missing and presumed dead.
   "The river took everything, there isn't anything left," said Jermanie
Vulsont, a mother who said the rushing water swept away her five children
in Fond Verrettes, about 35 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince.
   Rushing waters and mudslides swept away most homes in Fond Verrettes,
leaving it looking like a barren riverbed with stunned residents wandering
about and asking troops for help.
   "For a while we didn't even realize what we were standing on," said
Lance Cpl. Justin Collins, 21, of Avon, Ill., one of about 20 U.S. Marines
who went to help feed villagers. "We were standing on some parts of a
neighborhood."
   Other troops surveyed the damage in helicopters, accompanied by U.S.
Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a
spokesman. U.N. officials also flew in by helicopter to survey the damage,
Lapan said.
   The floods struck before dawn Monday while people were sleeping. In the
Dominican border town of Jimani, Leonardo Novas awoke to the screams of his
infant son while water rose in his wooden house. He huddled with his wife
and three children, and shouted to his brother next door to stay inside,
but it was too late.
   The force of the mud took all but one wall of Novas' house.
   "Everything's gone. My house and five family members," said Novas, 28,
who watched his brother and the brother's family carried away in a torrent
of mud.
   Dominican authorities buried more than 250 bodies immediately, some
where they were found and others in a mass grave. Authorities told families
there was no time to identify many of the bodies because they were badly
decomposed and posed health risks if moved.
   Jimani, about 100 miles east of the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo,
is inhabited mostly by Haitian migrants who work as vendors and sugar cane
cutters. Dominican officials said some of the Haitians who lost relatives
may have been living in the town illegally and were scared to identify
bodies.
   The death tolls have been high because the border area is largely
deforested and many of the poor have built poorly constructed homes out of
wood and tin. Hundreds of homes were destroyed on both sides of the border.
   The floods were some of the deadliest in the region in recent years. In
1994, Tropical Storm Gordon caused mudslides that buried at least 829
Haitians. As many as 15,000 people are estimated to have died in 1999
flooding and mudslides in Venezuela.
   The Dominican government declared Jimani a disaster area, and President
Hipolito Mejia said Thursday would be a national day of mourning.
   "The damage and human losses have been of such magnitude," Mejia said in
his declaration, adding that sending aid is of "high national interest."
   ------
   Associated Press Writer Jose P. Monegro, in Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic, contributed to this report.