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Dominican, Haiti floods death toll nears 2,000
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-05-27 08:47 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.
People from the border province of
Jimani, 280 Km West of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, move in a
flooded road of the settlement. [AFP] | 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.
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