23366: Durban: WashPost Editorial (Hurricane Damage) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

Here is the lead editorial in the Washington Post of 10/4/04.
LPD

                 Calamity in the Caribbean

    IN HAITI the bodies are still turning up. Reports from the
island republic mention Haitians shoveling corpses out from
under branches and mud -- the detritus of Tropical Storm Jeanne
and the floods it triggered last month. Perhaps 2,000 are dead,
and more may be missing. In tiny Grenada, whose landmass is
scarcely twice that of the District, 90 percent of the buildings
on the island were damaged by Hurricane Ivan. The hurricane also
decimated Grenada's nutmeg trees, which take a decade to become
productive, and devastated hotels, mainstays of the tourist
industry that provides the island with 70 percent of its income.


  The storms paused long enough in the Caribbean on their way to

Florida to deliver knockout blows to the bantamweight islands.
Americans fixated on Florida may have barely noticed, but the
destruction and suffering in the islands was overwhelming. The
Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Turks
and Caicos Islands, and St. Lucia -- all were damaged. Grenada's
recovery will take years.

  Haiti, no stranger to calamity, is suffering a catastrophe. An

estimated 300,000 people have been made homeless by floods. In
the northwest, where Jeanne unleashed much of its wrath, food
and potable water are scarce. Highways are cut or impassable;
Port-de-Paix, a town of 45,000 on the north coast, is reachable
only by air. In the port of Gonaives, Haiti's third-largest
city, marauding gangs desperate from thirst and hunger have
attacked trucks hauling bottled water and depots holding
humanitarian food stockpiles. Fears of famine are rising, since
flood waters and mud covered some of the most fertile acres in
the country.  Poverty, deforestation and the virtual absence of
effective government all conspire to deepen the misery.

  President Bush has proposed $12.2 billion in aid for
hurricane-damaged areas, mostly in Florida and other Southern
states. The package includes $50 million for the islands, nearly
half of it for Haiti. We hope Congress passes it quickly, but
let's be blunt:  The amount set aside for the Caribbean nations
is a pittance -- not to mention a fraction of what was spent on
U.S. military interventions in Haiti and Grenada.

  Americans who wish to help may send their own donations. One
conduit for such private support is CARE, which has been active
in Haiti for 50 years and is deeply involved in the current
relief efforts. Information is available at www.careusa.org.