23229: (Chamberlain) Haiti begins mass burials of flood victims (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Joseph Guyler Delva

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Haiti began burying
hundreds of flood victims in mass graves on Wednesday while emergency food
was distributed to some of the thousands of people made homeless by
Tropical Storm Jeanne.
     More than 700 died, and 1,000 were still missing after walls of water
roared down from the Caribbean country's deforested hills over the weekend,
and left the northern cities of Gonaives and Port-de-Paix under a dense
crust of mud.
     Elie Cantave, the top government official for the Artibonite region
around Gonaives, a city of 200,000, said public workers and U.N.
peacekeepers would bury about 200 of the dead on Wednesday to prevent the
spread of disease.
     The U.N.'s World Food Programme said its first convoy of trucks
carrying 40 metric tons of food arrived Tuesday night and aid agencies were
distributing rice, beans, cooking oil and loaves of fresh bread.
     "At this point we think at least 175,000 people are affected across
the country. Many of them were already very vulnerable and now, they have
lost their homes, their entire crops, their animals and the few belongings
they had," said the WFP country director, Guy Gauvreau.
     "It is a huge disaster. The water has just washed away everything," he
said in a statement.
     The WFP has long provided food for 500,000 people in the poorest
country of the Americas, and increased operations after a violent revolt
forced ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to flee into exile on Feb. 29.
     Devastating floods and mudslides in May, in which about 2,000 people
died, further aggravated the humanitarian disaster facing the county. Haiti
is chronically vulnerable to flooding because of widespread deforestation
caused by Haitians digging up roots to make charcoal for cooking.
     U.N. forces maintaining the peace after Aristide's departure were
helping with rescue and relief efforts.
     The international Red Cross, meanwhile, launched a worldwide appeal
for $3.3 million to help the flood victims.
     Haitian-American hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean joined aid workers.
     "I came here to see my people, to see their desperation and to assess
the situation and see how we can help," Jean told Reuters. "I want to be
able to tell the world about the disaster I witnessed here."
     Jean said he was trying to organize a "peace concert" for later this
year featuring top international stars and open to up to 1 million Haitians
-- an eighth of the island's population.
     Jeanne, which became a hurricane for the second time, also killed 11
people in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola
with Haiti, and two in the U.S. Caribbean territory of Puerto Rico.
     By 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Wednesday, Jeanne was 530 miles (855 km)
east of Great Abaco island in the northeastern Bahamas and moving slowly
south.
     Boasting winds of 100 mph (160 kph), the hurricane was expected to
swing to the west eventually and may threaten the U.S. East Coast next
week, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Florida has already been
battered by three big hurricanes in an unusually busy Atlantic hurricane
season.
     Two other storms continued to swirl through the Atlantic. Hurricane
Karl was about 1,490 miles (2,395 km) west-southwest of the Azores and
unlikely to threaten land.
     Tropical Storm Lisa was also far from land, at about 1,165 miles
(1,875 km) west of the Cape Verde islands.