23225: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-More than 600 bodies found in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Tue, Sep. 21, 2004







More than 600 bodies found in Haiti

BY SUSANNAH NESMITH

snesmith@herald.com


GONAIVES, Haiti - Gilbert Joseph lost one son, 10-year-old Fristel, when
Tropical Storm Jeanne's flash floods crashed through this city. But he
considers himself relatively lucky, because he saved his four other children
from the waters that killed more than 600 others.

''He got away from me,'' Joseph said Monday. ``I couldn't do anything; I
watched him die.''

Joseph was not the only one to stare into the face of death when Jeanne's
rains hit. Some 500 bodies have been brought to the morgue in Gonaives and
another 56 died in the northern coastal city of Port-de-Paix, said Toussaint
Kongo-Doudou, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti. An
additional 17 died in the nearby town of Terre Neuve, officials said.

Dieufort Deslorges, a spokesman for the government civil protection agency,
reported another 49 bodies recovered in other villages and towns, most in
the northwest.

Eighty percent of the 200,000 people in Gonaives, a port city a two-hour
drive north of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, were affected in some
way by the floods and mudslides, the U.N. added.

Sherley Pavril said she first realized the water was rising when it came
under her door early Sunday. When she went outside, she saw three bodies
floating down her street. ''I thought it was the end of the world,'' she
told The Herald.

Like hundreds of her neighbors, Pavril spent all night on her roof. Michel
Saint Juste said the water in his house rose so rapidly he had to break
through the roof to get out.

Pavril said she watched, horrified, as the water tore down some of the
houses around hers and plunged her neighbors into the flood. She's certain
that they all drowned.

Muddy water still covered much of Gonaives on Monday, more than 24 hours
after the waters rose, leaving marks 10 feet up on walls. Rescuers went from
wrecked house to wrecked house looking for bodies, and several cars were
half-covered in water.

Gonaives lies at the western end of the Artibonite valley, Haiti's
breadbasket, but like most of the hemisphere's poorest nation, it is almost
entirely denuded of trees, cut down to make charcoal for cooking. The lack
of trees allows rains to wash easily down into the valley's four rivers,
which regularly turn into watery avalanches.

As the waters receded, Joseph trudged with thousands of others through
knee-high mud and water in downtown Gonaives, some looking for higher ground
to spend the night, others looking for food, still others searching for
missing loved ones.

A dead man floated in the city's center. About one-third of the bodies
stacked in Gonaives' flood-damaged General Hospital were children, The
Associated Press reported.

''People are eating what they find in the water, bananas and even dead
animals,'' said Carlos Verna, an employee of the Chachoo Hotel near the
Gonaives hospital, which stood empty Monday, gutted by the muddy waters.

''Up until now, I have been living on my roof,'' said Remy Saint Juste, a
government port inspector. ``My five children? On the roof!''

He carried a sack over his shoulder, hoping to find food in the city's
center.

U.N. peacekeeping forces, deployed in Haiti since a February revolt that
forced former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to leave the country, flew 12
relief missions to Gonaives on Sunday, said Denise Cook, a U.N. spokeswoman
in New York City. Argentine peacekeepers also treated 380 injured people.

And the U.N. World Food Programme sent a convoy of 12 trucks carrying some
40 metric tons of food to Gonaives, the relief agency said in a statement.

Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, after a brief inspection tour
Sunday, declared Gonaives a disaster zone and thanked the U.N. troops for
their rescue and relief efforts.

But Saint Juste said he hadn't heard of any assistance reaching his city.
``If someone is giving out food, I don't know where they are. I have enough
for tonight and that's it. We need help soon.''

Jeanne's flood waters have almost completely cut off the city from the
outside world. They washed over the road from Port-au-Prince, and the only
vehicles to get through are large trucks and four-wheel drive SUVs.

And those need guides perched on the hoods to show drivers the shallow
parts.

''I've been doing this all day, one truck at a time,'' said Senou Gracia,
who charged a little less than $10 to direct drivers through waters that
still come in under the doors and make engines sputter.

''If you don't know the road, you'll end up in the field, and you'll never
get out,'' he said after one successful crossing. Although it was only a
tropical storm when it swept from east to west just north of Haiti, Jeanne,
now a hurricane, has claimed more lives in the Caribbean than hurricanes
Charley, Frances and Ivan put together.

At least 11 people drowned in the Dominican Republic on Monday from its
flooding, and three people died in Puerto Rico.

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
hthttp://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/