23178: (Chamberlain) Floods from Tropical Storm Jeanne kill 57 in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Floods from Tropical Storm
Jeanne killed 57 people in Haiti and many more were missing in the
Caribbean nation on Sunday as the storm swirled in the Atlantic east of the
Bahamas, a civil protection official said.
     Jeanne previously killed 11 people and destroyed hundreds of houses in
the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
     Two days of steady rain sent torrents down the mountains in the
Artibonite region of northern Haiti, causing the Laquinte River to burst
its banks, civil defense officials said.
     Homes were washed away, cars were caught in the rising water and
telephone service was cut off, making it difficult to communicate with
emergency officials in the region.
     Civil protection director Alta Jean-Baptiste said 57 people died in
the flooding and many more were missing in the Artibonite region around
Gonaives.
     Another official with the agency said at least 380 people were
injured, including four who were evacuated to a hospital in Port-au-Prince
some 125 miles (200 km) away.
     "We are working with different United Nations agencies and the
(interior) minister to better assess the situation and assist the victims,"
Jean-Baptiste said.
     Haiti is vulnerable to flooding because it has been severely
deforested.
     Jeanne, which killed two people in Puerto Rico last week, was spinning
northward in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday about 145 miles (230 km)
east-northeast of the central Bahamian island of San Salvador and had top
sustained winds of 50 mph (80 kph).
     The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami expected it to turn to the
northeast, away from the Bahamas by late Monday. That path also would spare
Florida, which has been devastated by three hurricanes in the last five
weeks.
     Forecasters kept an eye on two other tropical systems, the latest in
an unrelenting Atlantic hurricane season.
     Hurricane Karl strengthened into a fierce Category 4 storm on the
five-step scale of hurricane intensity with 135 mph (215 kph) winds. But it
was far out in the Atlantic 1,155 miles (1,850 km) east of the Caribbean
islands of the Lesser Antilles, and was expected to stay far away from
land.
     Another swirling mass of thunderstorms developed into a tropical
depression over the eastern Atlantic on Sunday, and could strengthen into
Tropical Storm Lisa over the next few days, forecasters said. It posed no
immediate threat to land.