Haiti flood toll tops 300

[seemslikeadream]

Mon 20 September, 2004 19:17

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - More than 300 people have died in Haiti from flooding and mudslides triggered by Tropical Storm Jeanne, according to aid workers who said half of the northern city of Gonaives was still underwater.

"We have counted 250 bodies at the hospital morgue in Gonaives," U.N. spokesman Toussaint Congo-Doudou said after heavy rains sent a wall of muddy water crashing through northern towns over the weekend.

U.N. peacekeepers had unconfirmed reports of another 150 dead in Gonaives, said U.N. coordinator Adama Guindo.

The northern city was the birthplace of Haiti's independence from France 200 years ago and it was where an armed revolt began this year that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Forty-seven people were also confirmed killed in the northwest province, around the town of Port-de-Paix, said Henry Max Thelus, a government official. Eight deaths were recorded elsewhere, bringing the total confirmed toll to 305.

more
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=587483§ion=news

[Lexboy1981]

1. 300 people wow

Jean-Baptiste Agilus, a 46-year-old teacher in Gonaives, said residents were completely unprepared for the deluge which filled some houses with four metres (13ft) of water.

He said a neighbour and her two children, aged 12 and 15, were swept away in the waters.

"The water rushed into their home, all the homes in the neighbourhood," he said.

"It destroyed everything."

[newyawker99]

5. Hi Lexboy1981!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[airstrip1]

2. Bet this barely makes the TV news

Hours of coverage devoted to Ivan but this storm has killed more people in a couple of days. Haitians are poor so their suffering is not going to attract any sympathy. They have to die in their thousands before the world even bothers to give them a second glance.

[struggle4progress]

3. UN agencies rush aid to Haiti as tropical storm death toll mounts

20 September 2004 – Hundreds of people are feared dead in Haiti after tropical storm Jeanne lashed the impoverished Caribbean country at the weekend, United Nations agencies said as they launched emergency relief operations in the wake of devastating floods and mudslides.

Two hundred and fifty bodies have already been identified in the northern city of Gonaïves, and the final death toll may be even higher than that, according to the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) Risk and Disaster Management Unit.

A delegation of senior officials from the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and Government ministers led by Prime Minister Gérard Latortue witnessed the destruction first-hand during a visit to the town and surrounding areas on Sunday.

As much as 80 per cent of Gonaïves, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants, is under water and mud as a result of tropical storm Jeanne, which struck the country after earlier causing death and damage in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The city has been declared a disaster zone by national authorities. <snip>

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=11979&Cr=haiti&Cr1=

[airstrip1]

4. Death toll over 600 and climbing

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3526147

This is bad. Still their only Haitians so who cares.

<sarcasm>

[Cheswick2.0]

6. I wonder if we could do a small fundraiser on DU for the people of Haiti