23224: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-Grief sweeps Haiti as death toll mounts (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Wed, Sep. 22, 2004





Grief sweeps Haiti as death toll mounts

BY SUSANNAH NESMITH AND CARL JUSTE

snesmith@herald.com


GONAIVES, Haiti - Even as some families buried their dead, the stacks of
bodies in the local hospital morgue grew Tuesday -- some of them likely
patients who drowned under the walls of water and mud unleashed by Hurricane
Jeanne.

''Where's the aid? Where's the world?'' one angry man shouted as desperate
survivors of Haiti's latest disaster mobbed interim Prime Minister Gerard
Latortue during a short visit to Gonaives, a port city of 200,000.

Another screamed that he and his neighbors had to pick up the bodies in
their block because no one else would. ''Why should victims be forced into
the position of aiding themselves?'' he complained.

The answer may be because there are so many bodies -- more than 600
recovered in the Gonaives area, 72 in the Port-de-Paix area to the north,
and scores more drowned in isolated villages. Many were believed to be still
beneath the mud and floodwaters that Jeanne left behind when it hit here
Saturday.

Noel Madiro, an employee of the nearby town of Terre-Neuve, arrived in
Gonaives on Tuesday to report 70 people dead there. ''We need help but no
one even knows about us,'' he said.

And Elie Cantave, the government official in charge of the Artinonite region
that surrounds Gonaives, told The Herald that she had reports of 1,000
people missing and presumed dead.

About 250,000 people were homeless, Dieufort Deslorges, spokesman for the
civil protection agency, told The Associated Press.

In small ways, normalcy began returning to Gonaives Tuesday. The local
market was bustling, some stores reopened, containers of gasoline were on
sale on the central plaza and women were drying rice, sugar and corn, soaked
by Jeanne, for later sale.

But just beyond that layer of daily life lay death.

LITTERED WITH CORPSES

Hospital workers continued to stack up bodies at the Gonaives Hospital
morgue, the corpses quickly bloating under the 90-degree heat and lack of
electricity for the morgue's refrigeration system.

All the hospital's patients died in the floods, said Erich Baumann, a Swiss
staffer with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Some families buried their dead at the local cemetery in above-ground
crypts, while others carried them into the countryside to look for higher
ground.

Hundreds of victims remained unidentified.

''War was better,'' said Baumann, noting he was in Gonaives during the
revolt in February that forced former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to
resign. ``Disaster is bad, very bad.''

Water still covered about half the city, but where the waters had receded --
sometimes leaving their mark on second-story walls -- families were
shoveling the ankle-high mud out of their homes. There was little to be done
for the dozens of cars almost covered by the muck, the trucks flipped on
their sides by the rushing waters.

Scattered shooting could be heard during the night, and police said people
were defending themselves from looters.

INTERNATIONAL HELP

U.N. World Food Program trucks delivered 40 tons of food to Gonaives on
Tuesday and brought medicines for a triage clinic set up in a high school by
Argentine peacekeepers. Trucks and pickups arrived there regularly to
deliver the injured.

The European Union promised $1.8 million in urgent aid, and Venezuela
announced it was sending $1 million and a ship loaded with food, water,
tents and a rescue squad.

The Red Cross brought four tons of medicine, Baumann said, and doctors from
the French-based Medecins Sans Frontiers as well as a group of Cuban doctors
who have worked in Gonaives for years were distributing the medicine.

A PLEA TO THE U.S.

Latortue urged Haitians living in the United States to send money rather
than goods to expedite the delivery of relief to Jeanne's victims.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided $50,000 in aid to
Haiti, triggering a bitter complaint by Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, D-Fla. The
sum ''is just a drop in the bucket compared to the desperate need of the
Haitian people,'' he said.

Floods regularly ravage Haiti because it is almost completely denuded of
trees, cut down to make charcoal, which turns any heavy rainfalls into
torrents of mud and water.

`PEOPLE HAVE SINNED'

About 3,000 were reported killed in flash floods and mudslides this spring
on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border.

But several Gonaives residents told The Herald that the latest catastrophe
was divine punishment for the brutal violence that racked this city during
the revolt against Aristide.

''People have sinned,,'' said Micheline Osias, a mother of 11 selling bread
in the market. ``They burned people alive here. This is punishment from
God.''

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