PORT-AU-PRINCE: Hundreds of people were found dead in Haiti as international aid trickled yesterday to desperate residents who have not eaten in days since the latest in a battery of storms crushed the country.
As the death toll jumped nearly fivefold in the wake of Tropical Storm Hanna, the poorest country in the Americas faced a possible new beating from Hurricane Ike, which threatened to graze Haiti’s vulnerable northwest coast. And more deaths could emerge. “The toll is increasing hourly,” warned the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “According to information from the government we have reached more than 500 deaths,” an OCHA statement said.
Ground zero of the devastation was in Gonaives, a flood-prone northwestern coastal city where about 3,000 people died four years ago when it was flooded by Tropical Storm Jeanne.
Massive deforestation has left Haiti vulnerable to flooding and mudslides. After Hanna struck earlier this week, many residents took refuge on the roofs of their homes before they were rescued by UN helicopters.
“The town of Gonaives has been completely devastated. The streets are lined with groups of people trying to find higher ground,” said Parnell Denis, the contact for aid organization Oxfam in Gonaives. “Food supplies and water are scarce and the price of the food that’s left is rising,” Denis said. “The morale of people staying in the shelters is so very low; I am afraid to tell them that another storm is on its way.”
Hanna meanwhile accelerated toward the northeastern New England states yesterday after the storm’s whipping winds and rain did not linger long enough over southeast United States to cause much more than some isolated flooding and power outages.
Hanna moved quickly inland after cruising ashore on Friday night with winds of around 80 kph. But as the storm cleared out of the southeast, eyes turned to the open Atlantic and the nasty looking Hurricane Ike — a Category 2 storm with 177 kph winds that was expected to strengthen as it approached Cuba and southern Florida by Monday.
