23219: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Jeanne (later story) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By AMY BRACKEN

   GONAIVES, Sept 22 (AP) -- Bodies lay in growing piles outside morgues as
U.N. peacekeepers planned the first major distribution of food and water
Wednesday in this city devastated by floods that have torn apart families
and left hungry crowds that have mobbed truckloads of aid.
   The death toll from deluges unleashed by Tropical Storm Jeanne climbed
to the more than 700, Haitian officials said Tuesday, with more than 600 of
them in Gonaives alone. More than 1,000 others were declared missing.
   Jeanne, meanwhile, regained hurricane strength over the open Atlantic
this week and could head back toward the United States and threaten the
storm-battered Southeast coast, including Florida, as early as this
weekend, forecasters said Wednesday.
   It was too soon to tell where or if Jeanne would hit, but the National
Hurricane Center in Miami warned it could kick up dangerous surf and rip
currents along islands in the northwest and central Bahamas and along the
southeastern U.S. coast over the next few days.
   Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs still floated in muddy waters slowly
receding from the streets in Gonaives, Haiti's third-largest city with some
250,000 people. Not a house escaped damage. The homeless sloshed through
the streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people with houses
that still had roofs tried to dry scavenged clothes.
   Flies buzzed around bloated corpses piled high at the city's three
morgues. The electricity was off, and the stench of death hung over the
city.
   Relatives waited outside a morgue set up in the flood-damaged General
Hospital all day to identify and bury victims. But vehicles to carry bodies
to the cemetery never arrived. Most bodies remained unidentified.
   Destilor Aldajus, a 50-year-old farmer, said he and his six children
climbed onto their roof to escape the floods. But he was at the morgue
looking for his wife.
   "I couldn't find her, but I knew the water had taken her," he said.
   Red Cross volunteers put more than 100 bodies into body bags, leaving
them in a pile outside the morgue.
   "We're going to start burying people in mass graves," said Toussaint
Kongo-Doudou, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
   Renel Corvil, a 32-year-old farmer, said he had come to the morgue every
day since Saturday to look for his four missing children. On Tuesday, he
found them. But after waiting all day for bodies to be taken to the
cemetery, he left to bury a fifth child that already had been transported
to the graveyard.
   As they waited, survivors exchanged tales. "Everyone in my neighborhood
who survived had climbed a tree," Corvil said.
   Waterlines up to 10 feet high on Gonaives' buildings marked the worst of
the storm that sent torrents of water and mudslides down denuded hills,
destroying homes and crops.
   Dieufort Deslorges, spokesman for Haiti's civil protection agency, said
he expected the death toll to rise as reports come in from outlying
villages and rescuers dig through mudslides and rubble.
   Deslorges said rescue workers reported recovering 691 bodies -- about
600 of them in Gonaives and more than 40 in northern Port-de-Paix. Noel
Madiro Morilus, director of Terre Neuve agriculture department, said 17
people died in that farming center north of Gonaives.
   "Certainly there are more than 700 dead, certainly there are dozens more
dead," Deslorges told the AP. "It appears many were swept away to the sea,
there are bodies still buried in mud and rubble, or floating in water, and
that's not to mention the hundreds who are missing and the places we have
not yet been able to reach."
   Some 1,056 people were missing, almost all from Gonaives, Deslorges
said.
   Deslorges said some 250,000 people were homeless across the country, and
the storm destroyed at least 4,000 homes and damaged unknown thousands
more.
   Eight helicopters from a Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping force shuttled
shipments of water, food and supplies to Gonaives on Tuesday after Chilean
troops found the road from the north impassable, said Argentine Lt. Col.
Gaston Irigoyen, a spokesman.
   Interim President Boniface Alexandre pleaded for urgent emergency help
at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.
   Several nations were sending aid, including $1.8 million from the
European Union and $1 million and rescue supplies from Venezuela. The U.S.
Embassy announced $60,000 in immediate relief aid Monday, drawing criticism
from legislator Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., who called it "a drop in the
bucket."
   Irigoyen said troops planned to oversee distribution of food and water
on Wednesday. That could produce a riot among survivors, many of whom said
they had not eaten since the storm.
   A police officer in Gonaives said aid vehicles were having trouble
getting into the city because people were mobbing them. One truck made it
to the central City Hall, only to be attacked by people who squeezed inside
and threw packets of water into the scrambling crowd.
   Jeanne came four months after devastating floods along Haiti's southern
border with the Dominican Republic. Some 1,700 bodies were recovered and
1,600 more were presumed dead.
   Last week, Jeanne killed seven in Puerto Rico and 19 in Dominican
Republic, including 12 who drowned Monday in swollen rivers. The overall
death toll was 717.
   ------
   On the Net:
   National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
   Weather Underground storm site: http://www.wunderground.com/tropical