23240: (Hermantin)Miami-Herald-In Haiti, toll passes 1,000 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Thu, Sep. 23, 2004



R E L A T E D    L I N K S

HAITI | AFTER THE STORM


In Haiti, toll passes 1,000

BY SUSANNAH A. NESMITH AND JACQUELINE CHARLES

snesmith@herald.com


ST. MARC, Haiti - Hunger and thirst wracked survivors Wednesday as Haiti dug
mass graves for hundreds of victims of Tropical Storm Jeanne. Later, a
government official said the number of dead has exceeded 1,000.

Rescuers counted the bodies of 1,013 flood victims in Gonaives alone by
Wednesday night, said Dieufort Deslorges of the Haitian government's civil
protection agency. Another 58 bodies have been recovered elsewhere in
Haiti's northwest province, Deslorges told The Associated Press.

The staggering death toll was likely to rise because United Nations and
Haitian officials said 800 to 1,000 Haitians were still missing. Assessment
teams from the U.N. military peacekeeping mission were still trying to reach
isolated towns and villages in the Artibonite region, Haiti's breadbasket
and the area hardest hit by Jeanne's torrential weekend rains.

TOWNS HIT HARD

Gonaives, the port city of some 200,000 a four-hour drive north of St. Marc,
overwhelmingly suffered the brunt of Jeanne's fury. But other towns
reporting significant numbers of missing were Port-de-Paix and neighboring
Chansolme, 30 miles north of Gonaives, where 400 missing were reported, and
the town of Gros Morne, 10 miles north of Gonaives, Alix Baptiste, secretary
of state for Haitians Living Abroad, told The Herald.

A U.N. peacekeeping force official said that also hit hard were the villages
of Passereine, Poteaux and Mapou, all within 18 miles of Gonaives and
nestled in the mountains that virtually ring the city.

Three rivers that come down the mountains -- largely deforested to make
charcoal and therefore highly prone to flash floods and mudslides -- all but
point their streams at Gonaives and join to form the La Quinte River, which
flows into the Caribbean less than two miles south of the port.

In addition to the dead and missing, some 30,000 people were left homeless
by Jeanne's floodwaters and mudslides as the storm swept off Haiti's
northern coast Saturday, Baptiste noted.

Haitian officials meanwhile confirmed that they had begun burying the
hundreds of unidentified dead in mass graves in Gonaives, after taking their
pictures for possible future identification, to avert outbreaks of diseases.

Without working refrigeration systems and in 90-degree weather, the bodies
stacked up in the port's three morgues have been decaying and covering the
city with the rancid smell of death.

Public employees and volunteers were reported still pulling bodies out of
the mud and floodwaters, especially from narrow passages between houses
where the currents piled them up along with dead farm animals and other
debris.

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, D-Fla., wrote President Bush
urging him to provide ''immediate and significant humanitarian aid'' to
Haiti. ``Haiti is already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and
this latest crisis has made conditions there even worse.''

Meek also took the Bush administration to task for its meager response so
far -- $60,000 in emergency aid. ''This is wholly inadequate to properly
respond to this disaster,'' he wrote. ``It pales compared to the $1.8
million provided by the European Union and $1 million . . . from
Venezuela.''

DIFFICULT DELIVERIES

Thirteen trucks carrying 40 tons of food arrived in Gonaives late Tuesday --
the first food to arrive since Jeanne -- and another 40 tons was on its way
Wednesday, said Anne Poulsen, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program.

But the biggest concern was the lack of potable water, with municipal
supplies cut and many families too poor to burn the charcoal needed to boil
floodwater to safe levels.

Poulsen said her agency contracted with bakeries in the capital city of
Port-au-Prince and the northeastern port of Cap Haitien to produce bread for
the flood victims, and 5,000 loaves had already been delivered.

Eighty percent of Gonaives remained underwater Wednesday, making food
deliveries not impossible but challenging. Two trucks in the first relief
convoy had to be abandoned on the road.

''The biggest challenge is infrastructure,'' Poulsen said. ``Even though
Gonaives is accessible by car, it's very difficult to reach it. There's a
whole strip where you have the road completely underwater.''

Herald staff writer Michael A.W. Ottey contributed to this report from Miami
and special correspondent Mamie Ward contributed from Haiti.

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