23230: (Chamberlain) Haiti-Jeanne (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By AMY BRACKEN

   GONAIVES, Sept 22 (AP) -- U.N. peacekeepers fired into the air to keep a
hungry crowd at bay Wednesday as aid workers handed out bread, the first
food in days for some in this city devastated by floods that have killed
more than 700 people in Haiti.
   Jeanne, the storn that caused the destruction in Haiti and has since
regained hurricane strength over the open Atlantic this week, could head
back toward the Bahamas and the United States, threatening the
storm-battered southeast coast 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
southeast U.S. coast over the next few days.
   More than 1,000 people have been declared missing in Haiti. The northern
city of Gonaives was the hardest hit in the country -- with some 600 dead.
Piles of bodies grew in morgues as rescuers found more victims in mud and
rubble.
   More than 200 people lined up along a fence around Gonaives Roman
Catholic cathedral Wednesday as CARE aid workers began passing bread
through a gate in the fence. As the line disintegrated and the pressing
crowd threatened to bring down the fence, U.N. peacekeepers fired several
shots into the air. Order was restored and no one was hurt.
   On Wednesday, people who slept uncovered in muddy streets and near piles
of rubble in Gonaives' Place d'Armes, the central square, woke to wails and
another morning without breaking their fast.
   "Woy!" The traditional shriek of mourning cut through the air.
   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. No house escaped damage. The homeless sloshed through the
streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people in homes 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.
   Haitian Red Cross officials said they began mass burials Wednesday at
the Bois Marchand cemetery, though there was no activity when a reporter
visited.
   Graveyard manager Bony Jeudy said 78 people have been buried in five
graves since Monday at the public cemetery.
   "They come from all over, mostly on wooden carts. Adults, children and
babies. They were brought in by friends, families and strangers," he said
of the bodies.
   The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said
Haitian health engineers were expected in Gonaives on Thursday with
creoline and other materials to treat bodies.
   Relatives waited outside a morgue set up in the flood-damaged General
Hospital all Tuesday 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 the bodies to be taken to the
cemetery, he left to bury a fifth child whose corpse was already at 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, which 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.
   Last week, Jeanne also killed seven people in Puerto Rico and 19 in
Dominican Republic, including 12 who drowned Monday in swollen rivers. The
overall death toll was 717.
   At 11 a.m., Jeanne was centered about 530 miles east of the Bahamian
island of Great Abaco. It was moving toward the south, with a gradual turn
southwest and west expected in the next day. Hurricane-force winds extended
out 45 miles and tropical-storm force winds another 140 miles.
   Also out in the open Atlantic, Tropical Storm Lisa is forecast to take a
big swing northward in the next five days, diverting it from a track toward
the Leeward Islands, Williams said. And Hurricane Karl was expected to keep
moving away from North America.
   ------
   On the Net:
   National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov
   Weather Underground storm site: http://www.wunderground.com/tropical