Flooding kills more than 600 people

[Barbarella]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ribbean_storms

Caribbean Flooding Kills More Than 660

56 minutes ago

By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer

JIMANI, Dominican Republic - Dominican soldiers used dogs and shovels to search for flood victims Wednesday while U.S. and Canadian troops hurried to neighboring Haitian towns, trying to assess the full scope of a disaster that has killed more than 660 people and left hundreds missing.

Authorities told families there was no time to identify many of the bodies because they were badly decomposed and posed health risks if moved. Many bodies were dumped in a mass grave or buried by soldiers where they were found.


Survivors painted terrifying tales of sleeping families swept away in the floods Monday.


Leonardo Novas, a resident in the Dominican border town of Jimani, awoke to the screams of his infant son while water rose in his ramshackle wooden house. He quickly grabbed his wife and his son, and shouted to his brother next door to stay inside, but it was too late.


"Everything's gone — my house and five family members," said Novas, 28, who had watched helplessly as his brother and his family were carried away in a crushing torrent of mud.


"I can't find them," he said. "I didn't know they were burying them. They should let me find them first."


More than 100 bodies were dumped in a mass grave outside the border town of Jimani, about 100 miles west of the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo.


Jimani is inhabited mostly by Haitian migrants who work as vendors and sugar cane cutters, trying to make a better life. Dominican officials said some of the Haitians who lost family members may have been living in the town illegally and scared to identify bodies.


Mudslides have prevented rescue teams from reaching parts of the two countries for days. Some 400 people were missing in the Dominican Republic and more than 160 were unaccounted for in Haiti.


In Haiti, the death toll soared with officials reporting that more than 250 corpses were recovered and an additional 158 were missing and feared dead in the border town of Fond Verrette, near Jimani.


"The river took everything, there isn't anything left," said Jermanie Vulsont in Fond Verrette, who said the rushing water swept away her five children early Monday.


Troops from a U.S.-led multinational force sent to stabilize Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted on Feb. 29 returned to Fond Verrette on Wednesday, ferrying supplies to about 3,000 desperate villagers and U.N. assessment teams.


The floods came first and then a landslide covered much of the village with gravel. Few houses were left standing and many villagers were staying with relatives hours away.


"For a while we didn't even realize what we were standing on," said U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Collins, one of 20 U.S. Marines who went to help feed villagers biscuits and fruit. "We were standing on some parts of a neighborhood. It's clear they need more food and water."


Manie Ceceron, a 37-year-old mother who lost her five children said, "The rain came. I was in the house and I ran. I couldn't see anything. I didn't see my children. I never saw my children."


Workers recovered about 100 corpses in southern Grand Gosier and 100 more in the neighboring town of Mopou, said Haiti's Civil Protection Director Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste. Another 50 corpses were found elsewhere across the country.


Help has not yet been able to reach Mopou and more than 150 are reportedly injured and without health care, the Haitian government said. Other towns were also in need.

The death tolls have been high in Haiti because the impoverished nation is nearly 90 percent deforested and many of the poor build poorly constructed homes.

The Dominican government had issued an alert Sunday, warning people that rivers may swell with the rains. But Jimani has only limited access to radio broadcasts.

As sunshine baked the soggy earth Wednesday, residents tried to repair damaged houses. Hundreds on both sides of the border were destroyed and international organizations were considering relocating several families left homeless in the rains.

The floods were some of the deadliest in a decade. In 1994, Tropical Storm Gordon (news - web sites) caused mudslides that buried at least 829 Haitians.



I guess if you want to help out, the Red Cross is the way to go. I'm gonna go check and update this post if I find anything.
Update:
http://www.redcross.org/donate/goods/

[Barbarella]

Update:
http://cnn.aimtoday.cnn.com/news/sto...5.htm&sc=rontz

Dominican, Haiti Floods Death Toll Nears 2,000
By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - The death toll from devastating floods and landslides in Haiti and the Dominican Republic rose to at least 1,950 on Wednesday with the discovery of more than 1,000 bodies in a Haitian town.

The toll rose dramatically when the bodies were found in Mapou, a rural southeastern Haitian town where communications are poor, said Margareth Martin, the head of the civil protection office for Haiti's Southeast region.

Rescue workers dug through mud and debris for bodies three days after torrential rains sent rivers of mud and swirling waters through Hispaniola, the Caribbean island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Haiti's death toll stood at 1,660, including 1,000 in Mapou, 500 elsewhere in Haiti's Southeast region, 158 in the riverside town of Fond Verettes, and two in the south, at Port-a-Piment.


Authorities in the neighboring Dominican Republic said they had recovered 300 bodies, mostly from the disaster in Jimani near the Haitian border, where a river overflowed its banks before dawn and swept homes away as people slept.


In Haiti, troops from a U.S.-led peacekeeping force flew helicopter loads of bottled water, fruit and bread to the town of Fond Verette, where the storm washed out the winding mountainside road from Port-au-Prince and cut off ground transportation to the town of 40,000,


The floodwaters flattened fields of crops and ripped apart crude shacks fashioned from sticks and sheets of iron. Residents pulled furniture and other belongings from the streets, where they had been swept by the flood, and assembled mud-caked possessions in stacks along the sides of the roads.


Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas where the population of 8 million struggles for food and shelter. Four out of five people live in poverty and only a quarter of Haitians has access to safe drinking water.


The peacekeeping force, numbering about 3,500 foreign troops, was sent to Haiti to try to restore order after an armed revolt forced out former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February, the latest chapter in a long history of political upheaval in the country.


In the Dominican Republic, President Hipolito Mejia declared a day of national mourning for Thursday.


In the devastated Dominican town of Jimani, bodies were taken from the mud and from Lago Enriquillo, a lake where they had been swept by the raging waters. Corpses were found crushed against walls, clinging to tree trunks and buried in the mud.


Dogs trained to sniff out bodies were sent to join the recovery effort. Relief workers wore surgical masks against the stench of decomposing flesh and hauled bodies on stretchers, while rescuers hacked through the rubble of stick shacks with hatchets searching for corpses.


Many were buried in mass common graves. Authorities worried about diseases breaking out if bodies were left unburied. Bulldozers dug holes to bury others where they were found, in ground where buildings stood a few days ago.


Several hundred people were also still missing.


Survivors in Jimani said the flood waters reached 15 feet high.


Police officer Juan de la Cruz Mota Dotel said he lost two of his children and his wife in the disaster, along with 22 other members of his extended family. A third child, a 3-year-old daughter, survived, clinging onto a gravestone in a cemetery.


The Dominican Republic, a country of 8.5 million people, is more prosperous than its neighbor but still has areas of deep poverty.


Relief workers and supplies of medicines, food, blankets were pouring into the Jimani area. Army tents sprang up to shelter dozens of Dominican soldiers sent to help with relief efforts. A stream of helicopters flew in from the capital and trucks ferried wood to rebuild homes. A fire truck was used to clean mud from the local hospital.


The European Union was preparing a package worth $2.43 million for flood victims, the European Commission said in Brussels. The United States announced it was giving $50,000 dollars to help the relief effort and was sending two disaster experts to evaluate the damage. Japan also said it was giving $100,000 in emergency aid. (Additional by Manuel Jimenez in Santo Domingo and Daniel Morel in Jimani)

[jcldragon]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americ...orm/index.html

Hundreds killed in Hispaniola flooding; death toll mounting
Whole towns, families wiped out in Haiti, Dominican Republic

Thursday, May 27, 2004 Posted: 1:05 PM EDT (1705 GMT)

JIMANI, Dominican Republic (CNN) -- More than 500 people have died in flooding on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, shared by the nations of Haiti and Dominican Republic, and hundreds more are missing, according to the International Committee for the Red Cross.

Other estimates go much higher. Amy Bracken, a journalist in Haiti, said the country's Civil Protection Agency fears more than 1,000 people died in a single town in southern Haiti.

Weekend rains triggered the floods, which have hit the border areas between the two countries, sweeping away homes and residents in the dead of night. (Map)

In the Haitian border village of Fond Verrettes, U.S. and Canadian troops were distributing food to survivors, The Associated Press reported. More than 158 people were reported missing and presumed dead.

"The river took everything, there isn't anything left," survivor Jermanie Vulsont told the AP. Vulsont said her five children had been swept away in the floodwaters.

Stunned survivors were lining up for food from the troops and asking for help. Lance Cpl. Justin Collins, a Marine from Avon, Illinois, told the AP that it took time to understand the scope of the tragedy.

"For a while we didn't even realize what we were standing on," Collins told the AP. "We were standing on some parts of a neighborhood."

In the Dominican Republic, 329 deaths have been confirmed and 375 people were missing, said Jose Luis German, a government spokesman. He predicted the final toll would rise.

In the Dominican border town of Jimani, Leonardo Novas, 28, told the AP that he awoke to the screams of his infant son as water rose through his house.

The moving mud took out all walls of Novas' home except one, according to the AP. "Everything's gone," Novas said. "My house and five family members."

Gen. Jose Maria Jimenez of the Dominican Republic Army said the total damage has not yet been realized.

"Even though the press has done a good job of informing the public about the tragedy, I believe the people don't have a good idea of the magnitude of this tragedy, which has affected Jimani," Jimenez said.

Civil Defense workers and the Red Cross are bringing in drinking water, food, and shelter to survivors. U.S. forces, stationed in Haiti after Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left office in February, are also participating in the aid effort.

"We're working with the government of Haiti to determine what supplies they have and our helicopters will be utilized to begin the flow of material into this area," said Col. Glen Sachtleben, chief of staff of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Haiti.

Interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue blamed deforestation for the flooding.

"The forest up through here has been completely destroyed. I say completely, but probably by 80 percent, and the root of the problem is that we have to go and reforest the hill and until we do that, every two, three, four years after some heavy rain the same thing could happen again," Latortue said.

CNN's Susan Candiotti contributed to this report.

[Barbarella]

God...this is sooooooooooooooo sad

[jcldragon]

Yeah, these people are our neighbors, just a bit to the South...

[dustin]

wow...i got chills reading that. those poor people