22184: (Chamberlain) Quake rattles flood-hit Hispaniola (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 29 (Reuters) - A small earthquake rattled
the southern border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Saturday but
there were no reports of further deaths or destruction in an area where
devastating floods and mudslides killed about 2,000 people this week.
     The quake, with a magnitude of 4.4, was felt in the hard-hit Dominican
border town of Jimani, where more than 350 people were killed in the
flooding, the Dominican emergency operations center said. It did not report
any damage.
     The epicenter of the quake was on the Haitian side of the border at a
depth of 20 miles (33 km), the Dominican center said. Quakes of magnitude 4
can cause moderate damage, but are not considered severe.
     The quake hit as foreign military helicopters shuttled tons of food
and drinking water to flood-devastated Haitian towns, the only lifeline for
thousands of homeless people cut off from the world.
     With roads to the stricken areas impassable in many places,
helicopters have been the only way to reach survivors from the worst
natural disaster in years on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola that is
shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
     As many as 1,000 of the dead were in the southeastern Haitian town of
Mapou that was engulfed by the floods, officials say. The town of several
thousand people is only about 25 miles (40 km) southeast of the capital,
but roads were damaged by the torrents of mud and water that swept down
hillsides five days ago.
     "The helicopters are a very short-term fix for addressing immediate
needs," said Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, spokesman for the U.S. military in Haiti,
adding that road repairs would have to become a priority as the flooded
areas start to recover.
     A small boat to enable aid workers to get around Mapou, much of it
still submerged in a vast lake, was sent on one of the 15 to 20 helicopter
flights planned for Saturday, Lapan said.
     A U.S.-led multinational force, sent to the impoverished country three
months ago to help restore order after former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide was ousted by a bloody revolt, has turned to relief work.
     Tons of food and medical supplies such as chlorine tablets were
delivered to Mapou in previous days and most of Saturday's flights focused
on delivering relief supplies to other hard-hit towns -- Fond Verettes,
where more than 160 people died, and another small town in the southeast,
Thiotte.
     In Fond Verettes alone, some 8,500 people needed food, most of them
made homeless by the disaster, said Inigo Alvarez, a spokesman in Haiti for
the World Food Programme.
     He added that aid workers were also looking for more pockets of
disaster. "We are worried there are small isolated areas" that have not
been reached," Alvarez said.
     The death toll in Haiti stood at about 1,800, while more than 380
people were killed in the Dominican Republic, most in Jimani. Aid workers
and officials have said the toll could rise as more bodies are found in the
mud and debris.
     The flooding ravaged the crops and livestock of poor farmers who
scratch out a living and piled misery onto already desperate conditions in
Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas. Average per capita annual
income for Haiti's 8 million people is about $300.
     The World Food Programme was already running a program to feed some
140,000 people after months of civil unrest in Haiti. "The WFP is not new
to this country ... it is suffering a long, deep crisis," Alvarez said.
     The foreign military force, numbering about 3,500 troops, is due to
start handing over to U.N.-led troops on June 1, but Lapan said relief
flights would not suddenly come to a halt.

     (Additional reporting by Manuel Jimenez in Santo Domingo)