22186: (Chamberlain) Caribbean-Storms (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By PETER PRENGAMAN

   JIMANI, Dominican Republic, May 29 (AP) -- Dominican troops buried
bodies on a tiny island surrounded by crocodiles Saturday as doctors warned
of health hazards from shallow mass graves holding some of the 1,100
victims killed in floods along the border of Haiti and the Dominican
Republic.
   Survivors searched for food and shelter from a blistering sun that
raised temperatures to 95 degrees. A weak earthquake hit in the disaster
zone in the south-central part of the island of Hispaniola, but there were
no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
   Venezuela sent a planeload of food, clothing and medicine along with
doctors and disaster aid workers to Haiti.
   A Spanish Red Cross plane left Madrid Saturday for the Dominican
Republic, a former Spanish colony, carrying 12 tons of relief equipment
including water-purification gear, cooking kits and two large tents to set
up field hospitals.
   Aid workers and troops from a U.S.-led multinational force in Haiti were
trying to reach villagers cut off days ago when torrents and mudslides
buried entire communities.
   Among them was La Quarenta, a neighborhood of the Dominican border town
of Jimani, population 13,000, where all that remains are palm trees,
lopsided headstones in a cemetery and the cement foundations and chunks of
wood from uprooted houses.
   "We were sleeping and didn't hear the water coming in, then I felt it on
my face and tried to get out with my family. And that's the last thing I
remember," said Alexandro Novas, 35.
   He was found the next day, Tuesday, two miles from his home, with gashes
in his legs. His wife was killed, and his two children, ages 5 and 3, were
presumed dead.
   "Now I don't have my family and I don't have a house to live. I'm lost,"
said Novas. He and 500 others from La Quarenta have taken over an abandoned
government housing project, where the buildings -- roofless concrete shells
-- are upwind of the stench of rotting bodies.
   On Wednesday, Dominican authorities stopped trying to identify bodies
and said they were just burying victims where they found them.
   A group of Dominican doctors warned decomposing bodies buried in shallow
mass graves without protective plastic sheeting could cause an epidemic.
   "The contamination is already beginning to be felt," public health
specialist Luis Roa said in a radio interview broadcast Saturday. "Sooner
or later we're going to have to rebury them."
   Vice Admiral Ramon Lora Salcedo, president of the National Emergency
Commission, confirmed troops were burying bodies in graves three to four
feet deep, but said the military was doing the best it could under the
circumstances.
   "It's very easy to speak about this stuff from outside, but we're the
ones dealing with this terrible situation," he said.
   Officials said they planned to spray disinfectant from crop-dusting
planes to prevent disease, but it was not clear when that would happen.
   Dominican troops used a helicopter Saturday to reach an islet in a lake
crawling with crocodiles where bodies were washing up. They buried 15
bodies there, said Edwin Olivares, chief of operations for the Dominican
Civil Defense.
   On the Haitian side, which was worst hit, the Red Cross said it also was
concentrating Saturday on burying bodies.
   Red Cross workers flew into the destroyed farming center of Mapou with
pick axes, saws, shovels and an inflatable motorized dinghy to negotiate a
putrid lake of floodwaters bobbing with objects believed to dead people,
pigs and goats.
   The official toll of 1,104 dead in both countries, conservatively
estimated only from recovered bodies, is expected to rise. That count did
not include 70 bodies that the Red Cross said it recovered in Mapou on
Friday.
   U.S. Marines "are looking at the possibility of airlifting bodies" for
burial elsewhere, Lt. Col. Duane Perry said Friday. He estimated that about
a third of Mapou's 3,500 people were dead.
   On Saturday, U.S.-led troops including Marines, Canadians and Chileans
continued to ferry food, medicine, plastic sheeting and aid workers by
helicopter to Mapou and another hard-hit town, Fond Verrettes. Aid workers
handed out rice and beans and fresh water.
   Injured people, many with gashes from debris carried by the flood
waters, were being treated at a makeshift clinic set up in Mapou by the Red
Cross and manned by two Cuban doctors.
   French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, visiting Port-au-Prince on
Friday, promised urgent aid and long-term help in reversing the
deforestation that helps cause deadly floods and mudslides in Haiti, where
impoverished people strip mountains of trees to make charcoal.
   Interim President Boniface Alexandre said the government must look to
relocating people in flood-prone zones. "Every time there's a flood, it's
always the same victims," he said.
   --------
   Associated Press writer Amy Bracken contributed to this report from
Port-au-Prince, Haiti.