23253: Severe: LA Times Story (Haiti Death Toll Grows) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Constantin Severe <csevere@hotmail.com>

Haiti Storm Toll Could Reach 2,000; Many Are Still Stranded
  September 23, 2004
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer

GONAIVES, Haiti — The death toll from Tropical Storm Jeanne threatened to
reach 2,000 Wednesday, as tens of thousands of survivors wailed for food and
water from rooftops, where they were marooned by knee-deep moats of mud and
sewage.

Four days after residents were washed from their homes, more than 1,000
bodies had been counted in Gonaives and nearly 60 in other parts of the
island's northwestern province, said Dieufort Deslorges of the civil
protection agency. The number of missing rose past 1,200.

So desperate were the survivors that Argentine troops in a U.N. aid convoy
had to fire eight shots to stop rioting outside a school so the World Food
Program and the Oxfam charity could begin handing out the first loaves of
bread and plastic bottles of water.

>From the air, the city looked like a sprawl of aquatic campsites, with blue
tarpaulins provided by the relief agencies offering crude shelter on some of
the flat roofs, furnished with salvaged chairs, mattresses, tires and
clothing.

"We could only save the children. We have nothing else — it's all gone,"
said Wistha Jacques, whose four preschoolers slept on piles of damp clothing
plucked from the filthy water that had reached the eaves Sunday. "We've had
nothing to eat since we came up here and only droplets of water."

Like 80% of the inhabitants of this city of 200,000, Jacques and her family
fled to the roof when the floodwater that had seeped into the streets
Saturday suddenly surged after nightfall, becoming rivers of debris carrying
off cars, trees and the contents of houses.

Mud-encrusted sculptures of cars tangled with uprooted trees and bedsteads
were scattered throughout the city, which was blanketed by the stench of
decaying corpses and animal carcasses.

At a makeshift home next door to the Jacques family, a mere 2-foot leap,
teacher Previlon Pradel, who had yet to find his own family, joined dozens
of neighbors under lean-tos made of sheets and sticks sprawled on mattresses
drying in the steamy tropical heat. A box spring atop a wrecked BMW at the
front of the house served as springboard up to the communal shelter.

"No one knows why this place is so cursed," he said of his city's central
role in the rash of crises that lately have beset Haiti.

This bicentennial year was meant to be a celebration of the slave revolt
that began in 1791 and culminated in the declaration in Gonaives of the
first independent black republic in 1804.

Instead, it began amid political strife and rioting that marred the New
Year's Day anniversary of independence and became an armed rebellion that
spread from this northern port to the doorstep of the capital,
Port-au-Prince. On Feb. 29, then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled to
escape the angry mobs that still hold sway here and in other cities.

It was, in part, thanks to gang leaders that any food got handed out here
Wednesday. Hungry youths who pushed ahead of women and children in a ragged
queue seemed to heed the orders barked by a few toughs with bulging pockets
and wraparound sunglasses as much as the warning shots fired by the U.N.
peacekeepers from a second-floor balcony.

The volume of the need has daunted peacekeepers and those trying to help.

"Everybody's desperate. They don't know where to go for the distributions or
to get medical attention at the clinics," said a sweating and frustrated
Maite Alvarez, a relief worker with Oxfam, which trucked in 35,000 liters of
drinking water. Crowds of the newly homeless ran willy- nilly from truck to
truck and building to building, hoping that each arriving vehicle was
bringing something to eat or water to slake a thirst mocked by the
ubiquitous brown floodwater.

Haitians in areas unaffected by the devastation tried to come to their
countrymen's aid. Trucks with 4-foot tires — needed to get through the
knee-deep water on Route 1 from Port-au-Prince — brought in bread rolls and
plastic packets of drinking water, which volunteers tossed to the
roof-dwellers.

"We went through St. Marc with bullhorns and asked the people to help, to
give us what they could," said Herve St. Hilius, a student leader from the
city a two-hour drive to the south.

Grammy Award-winning hip hop artist Wyclef Jean, who had been in
Port-au-Prince to discuss a December benefit concert for his homeland,
hitched a ride on a U.N. helicopter to survey the destruction.

"Every Haitian is my family," he said, adding that he hoped his visit would
spur more generous donations from U.S. friends in the recording business.
"One of my main reasons for coming here is that I always bring awareness —
Haitian awareness…. I can't be here without going to see my people."

Jeanne killed 18 people in the adjacent Dominican Republic and three in
Puerto Rico before hitting Haiti. The storm has strengthened to hurricane
status and forecasters say it could strike the southeastern United States
this weekend.

In Haiti, Gonaives residents and shopkeepers swept sludge from floors and
porches where the water had receded enough, but relief officials warned that
the city would be dependent on foreign aid for months.

Most crops in the fertile Artibonite River valley have been inundated, and
homes were flushed of appliances, dishes, water taps and cash.

Troops and relief workers expressed concern that the central hospital, which
hasn't functioned as a medical facility since the February rebellion, had
become a health hazard, with hundreds of corpses wrapped in sheets and
stacked like rolls of carpet. Only a few dozen of the dead have been
identified.

The hospital crematorium began work Wednesday, and the Interior Ministry
said more than 100 victims were buried in what probably would be the first
of several mass graves.

Medics from the U.N. peacekeeping deployment, known by its acronym in
French, MINUSTAH, were already reporting illness and disease among the
survivors.

At a clinic in an unfinished building of cinderblock walls and concrete
floors, 21-month-old Slabie Aldjuste hovered near death in the arms of her
aunt, sick from inhaling the filthy water in their harrowing escape
Saturday.

"I was trying to climb up to the roof to where my sister and mother were and
the water just dragged us off," said Caroline Aldjuste, bruised and still
splattered with dried mud as she waited to get help for the listless infant.

"The baby got snagged on some branches and nearly drowned, but I kept hold
of her."

The four huddled on the roof, sleeping on bare concrete in darkness
alleviated only by starlight, until the water receded enough for her to
carry Slabie two miles to a doctor.

Others patients arrayed on stretchers screamed in pain as medics poured
disinfectant into four-day-old wounds — feet gashed open by rocks or boards
or other debris propelled by the raging water. Instructions to keep the
dressings clean were clearly futile.

"There's no clean water even to drink," said Louis St. Marie, 23. He dragged
a bandaged foot from the concrete floor into foot-deep mud that stood
between the clinic and the flooded route home.

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