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Thu 27 May, 2004 11:38 pm
Int'l. Aid Arrives in Flood-Ravaged Haiti
By AMY BRACKEN
(AP) An aerial view of the flood waters that cut through a community in Fond Verrettes, Haiti, Thursday,...
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - U.S. and Canadian troops rushed medical supplies, drinking water and chlorine tablets Thursday to flood-battered towns, where bodies were seen floating near the tops of palm trees. Haitian and Dominicans braced for a death toll that could reach 2,000.
About 10,000 people in villages surrounding the submerged Haitian town of Mapou, who are cut off by roads devoured in the mud and landslides, remained in urgent need of help, according to Michel Matera, a U.N. technical adviser.
"We are still having difficulty reaching them even by helicopter," said Matera, who traveled to Mapou on Thursday. "We cannot land because of the flooding, nor can we get there on foot."
Late Thursday night, confirmed deaths in the two countries rose to nearly 1,000 with Haitian officials saying the recovery of scores of more bodies brought the toll to 579. The Dominican Republic reported 417 deaths there earlier.
In what could add to the disaster, forecasters predicted more rain in the coming days for the southern border region between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as residents of Mapou tried to dry their clothes and other belongings on tree branches.
"We're also fighting time because weather is turning bad again," said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led force. Hurricane season, which marks the beginning of the rainy season, starts Tuesday.
U.S. Marines, traveling by helicopter, hurried to deliver drinking water and chlorine tablets to hundreds in Mapou, which was covered by more than 10 feet of water.
"The situation is serious," Lapan said of the town, some 30 miles southeast of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
The U.S. troops delivered plastic tarpaulins for shelter in the Haitian border town of Fond Verrettes, and Red Cross workers in the Dominican Republic put up mosquito nets to help prevent malaria and dengue fever.
Mudslides have washed out roads in southern Haiti, preventing workers from getting an accurate death toll. U.N. teams planned to bring in boats Friday to help recover bodies. If workers cannot recover the corpses in time, they could contaminate water sources.
"You can still see bodies in the water coming up," Matera said. "Palm trees are almost covered. There is a grave risk of an epidemic."
U.S. Marines said they saw bodies near the tops of palm trees.
Rains over the weekend lashed the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, sweeping away entire neighborhoods early Monday. The floods struck before dawn while people were asleep. Some watched relatives and homes carried away in torrents of mud.
While the official death toll climbed to 996, the hundreds missing in both countries fed fears that the final toll could climb as high as 2,000 in the deadliest floods to hit the island in recent memory.
In Mapou alone, 300 bodies have been found and at least 700 more people were missing and feared dead, according to Margarette Martin, the government's representative for Haiti's southeast province.
The latest confirmed Haitian casualties occurred in the border town of Fond Verrettes where 165 people, including 45 children, were declared dead by the government Thursday night. About 100 bodies were recovered earlier in the southern town of Grand Gosier and several more elsewhere.
For many Haitians, it was one more disaster to pile atop the troubles weighing down on the poorest country in the Americas. The U.S.-led force, brought in to help after rebels ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29, struggled to fill urgent needs while they prepare to hand over control to a U.N. force next Tuesday.
Real estate salesman Sentheliare Veretnne, 45, said his family's small farm on the south coast was swept into the sea and others he knew were missing.
"I had no reaction because the country is already in crisis," he said. "We have no work, there's the political situation, everything. You can't react emotionally."
Haiti has become a hazardous place for flooding and mudslides because its impoverished people constantly fell trees to make charcoal - a practice that has left the country almost entirely deforested. Without roots to hold back the soil, rains can bring disaster.
One 18-year-old Haitian, Pepe Dematin, traveled from northern Cap-Haitien across the border to the Dominican town of Jimani searching for his brother's family of five.
"I came to find them, but their house is gone," Dematin said. "I think they must be dead."
Haiti's government, which has scant resources to deal the disaster, called for flags to be flown as half-staff Friday.
Dominican President Hipolito Mejia toured the border town of Jimani, promising new homes for families who had lost them.
The U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Hans Hertell, also visited the town to assess the damage. "This situation is grim and we're looking at ways to get more money here."
American and Dutch Red Cross workers were helping Dominican authorities search for more bodies and treat dozens who were wounded, said Gustavo Lara, of the Dominican Red Cross.
Dominican authorities buried more than 250 bodies immediately, some where they were found and others in a mass grave. Authorities told families there was no time to identify the bodies because they were badly decomposed. Officials plan to spray disinfectant by plane over Jimani to prevent the remains from spreading disease.
Jimani, about 100 miles west of the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo, is inhabited mostly by Haitian migrants who work as vendors and sugar cane cutters.
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Associated Press writers Peter Prengaman and Jose P. Monegro, in the Dominican Republic, contributed to this report.
The key to the size of this tragedy is the lack of preventive civil protection measures.
Poverty drives people to settle in unclaimed land, which is potentially very dangerous to live on.
Local politics or lack of interest on peoples' lives let them be... until the disaster comes.
It's also very probable that they didn't have official warnings or civil brigades to organize a escape from the area.
This is very understandable of Haiti.
Not so much about the Dominican Republic.
Death, Survival in Haiti's Flood-Struck Mapou
By Joseph Guyler Delva
MAPOU, Haiti (Reuters) - When the flood came to the Haitian town of Mapou in the middle of the night, 16-year-old Santa Modeus thought she would die until she rammed into the tree that saved her life. Modeus told her tale of survival on Friday as foreign troops and international aid workers rushed 20 tons of rice, cereal and vegetables to the submerged village, crushed by the torrential rains and floods that savaged the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and killed an estimated 2,000 people.
Sinking as the torrent swept her along, Modeus latched onto a tree and climbed out of the water, where she clung to the branches for hours until rescue came toward midday. Her mother and two siblings died, among the 1,000 people officials say were killed in Mapou.
"It's God that saved me. While I was under water, I was saying that I was going to die," she said, nursing a wound on her right arm. "I went into a tree, and I hung onto it, and I climbed it and that's what saved me."
A village of several thousand people in a valley about 25 miles southeast of Haiti's capital, Mapou remained under water and inaccessible by road on Friday as rescuers sped water, purification tablets and emergency food rations by helicopter to thousands of stranded people.
Witnesses said corpses of flood victims trapped for days in submerged homes were beginning to float to the surface of the lake that covered Mapou. Only a few rooftops were visible above the water.
Aid workers say nearly 300 bodies were recovered in Mapou, while a local government official put the death toll at 1,000, with hundreds of bodies trapped under water or buried in mud.
"We are concerned that the death toll could go even beyond 1,000, given the fact there are a lot of bodies either floating on the water or buried under the mud that have not been recovered yet," said Guy Gauvreau, director of the World Food Program in Haiti.
Villagers said those who survived clung to the tops of trees or climbed to rooftops, from which they were plucked by men who fashioned a crude rescue raft from a door lashed to two palm tree trunks.
Fedner Salomond, a 39-year-old father of three, said he faced a terrible choice when flood waters rushed into his home in the dark. He had one of his children in his arms but was unable to reach the other two before making a desperate climb to the roof.
"The one in my hands, I had to let go. I could not climb with him, because I was going to die," Salomond said. "It was very sad; my heart was breaking, but I had to make a choice whether both of us died or I was saved."
The death toll in Haiti stood at about 1,800, including the 1,000 reported deaths in Mapou, hundreds more in surrounding villages in the southeast and some 160 in Fond Verettes, a town near the Dominican border. About 350 people were killed in the Dominican Republic, most in the border town of Jimani.
Just three months after a bloody rebellion that ousted its president and government, Haiti was confronting its worst natural disaster in a decade with the help of U.S., French and other foreign troops sent by the United Nations for security.
Military helicopters meant for peacekeeping duties were providing critical transport to remote villages. Some flights were grounded by thunderstorms on Thursday, and bad weather threatened the rescue effort again on Friday.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Most of its 8 million people scratch out a living from the land and per-capita annual income is about $300.
Haitians have cut down virtually all of the nation's trees to make charcoal for cooking fuel, leaving the barren land vulnerable to flash floods and mudslides.
Haiti's new leader, Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, announced plans on Friday to tackle the problem. "I have plans to speak to the members of my cabinet ... and maybe set up an emergency plan, invite students to take part in a plan to reforest the country," Latortue told a news conference on a visit to Mexico.
"The main cause (of deforestation) is that Haitians like to use wood for cooking, as an energy source. We have been doing it for years and now it is impossible to continue," the prime minister said at a summit of European, Latin American and Caribbean leaders in the city of Guadalajara.
(Additional reporting by Manuel Jimenez in Jimani)
First Brazilian Troops Arrive in Haiti
By AMY BRACKEN
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Forty-two Brazilian soldiers flew into Haiti on Saturday, the vanguard of a force to command a new U.N. peacekeeping mission taking over from the U.S.-led multinational force.
A ceremonial handover is planned June 1, though the transition will continue through the month. Some 1,500 U.S. Marines and 400 U.S. soldiers and sailors are to leave by the end of June.
The U.S. troops are bringing aid to thousands of people left homeless by floods and landslides in the last week, but their main mission is disarming militias after the Feb. 29 resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
"Our first mission here is providing security and then we will add to that political, economic and social stability," Lt. Col. Antonio Carlos Faillace said after arriving Saturday.
Arriving Tuesday will be Brazilian generals Augusto Heleno, who will command the U.N. force, and Americo Salvador de Oliveira, who will be in charge of the Brazilian contingent, Faillace said.
Brazil's 850 soldiers will provide the core of the U.N.-mandated force of 6,700 troops and 1,622 police.
Chile has already committed 650 troops and Argentina plans to send up to 600. Another 10 countries are sending troops and 22 countries are sending civilian police.
The U.N. mission is expected to last six months, but Brazilian defense ministry officials acknowledge troops may need to remain longer.
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