Death toll climbs to at least 675 in floods
by Dominique Levanti
Thursday, May 27, 2004
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): Rescuers probed
mud-filled homes Wednesday for survivors of the rain-driven flash floods that
pummelled Haiti and the Dominican Republic this week, leaving at least 675
dead and hundreds missing. In Haiti the
official death toll rose to 375, while in the Dominican Republic it stood at
300 with 375 missing. The worst hit have been
the Dominican town of Jimani and the Haitian town of Fonds Verettes, both
close to the border dividing the island of Hispanola shared by the two
countries. The island is at the eye of a
fierce tropical storm that has been lashing the Caribbean the past 10 days.
Jimani was devastated after the rain-swelled Soleil River burst its banks and
swept hundreds of people, many of them women and children, from their homes,
as thousands were evacuated. Jose Luis
German, spokesman for the Dominican National Emergency Commission, said 300
were confirmed dead in Jimani, 120 were injured and 375 missing, with the
death toll rising steadily. Fonds Verettes,
an agricultural town of 45,000 built on a dry riverbed northeast of
Port-au-Prince, reported 158 dead, along with 546 houses destroyed and over
3,000 heavily damaged. The two towns
accounted for the major part of the official death toll.
Felix Dotel, a doctor with the local Jimani health department, told AFP up to
1,000 may have died in the town because the local authorities did not have an
accurate register of the population. The
torrential rain showed no signs of abating Wednesday as rescuers dug through
the mud and local authorities buried many of the dead in mass graves. Over 100
unidentified bodies were buried in a grave in a forest outside Jimani on
Tuesday. Authorities said nearly 30,000
people had been evacuated from their homes in the Dominican Republic.
The US State Department said the US Agency for International Development had
provided 50,000 dollars in aid and that the agency's advisors were conducting
on-scene assessments for further aid. In New
York, whose Dominican community numbers some 400,000, Mayor Michael Bloomberg
said a team of disaster management specialists would go to the island early
Thursday "to conduct an assessment of what is needed in the aftermath of the
deadly floods.
"The team...will look at areas of health and
human services, infrastructure, sanitation and mass casualty care, and make a
recommendation...as to what we can do to help the people of the Dominican
Republic and Haiti," said Bloomberg.
Inhabitants of the two countries meanwhile told miraculous survival tales as
the Soleil turned into a torrent in the early hours of Monday morning.
Bartolina Diaz, 65, said she clung to an iron door on her house that the
waters could not drag away. Dionisio Mendez,
86, who is blind, was swept a kilometer (0.6 mile) downstream before he
managed to grab a tree. In Haiti, members of
the multi-national force brought in to assure security after deposed president
Jean Baptiste Aristide resigned and fled at the end of February were trying to
get emergency supplies to the worst-hit areas.
United Nations and other aid workers were trying to reach hard-hit areas.
Multi-national force helicopters were ferrying food, water and emergency
medical supplies. In southeastern Haiti,
Grand Gosier and Mapou Belle Anse were also hard hit by flooding, with around
100 people killed in each town.
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