Hurricane Season
Horror scenes from storm-hit Haiti
691 confirmed dead, toll expected to rise
21.09.2004

GONAIVES, Haiti -- Blood swirled in knee-deep floodwaters as workers stacked bodies outside the hospital morgue.

Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs and pieces of smashed furniture floated in muddy streams that once were the streets of the battered city of Gonaives.

Haitian officials said Tuesday the death toll across the country from the weekend deluges brought by Tropical Storm Jeanne was at 691, with some 600 of them in Gonaives, but they expected to find more dead.

Waterlines up to 10 feet (three meters) high on Gonaives' buildings marked the worst of the storm that sent torrents of water and mudslides gushing down denuded hills, destroying homes and crops in the Artibonite region that is Haiti's breadbasket.

Floodwaters receded, but half of Haiti's third-largest city was still swamped with contaminated water up to waist high four days after Jeanne passed.

Not a house in the city of 250,000 people escaped damage. The homeless sloshed through the streets carrying belongings on their heads, while people with houses that still had roofs tried to dry scavenged clothes.

"We're going to start burying people in mass graves," said Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Some victims were buried Monday.

Flies buzzed around bloated corpses piled high at the city's three morgues, where the electricity was off as temperatures topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius).

The stench of death hung over the city.

Only about 30 of the 250 bodies at the flood-damaged General Hospital had been identified, Dr Daniel Rubens of the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

Many of the dead there were children.

Relatives waited outside the morgue all day to identify and bury victims. But vehicles to carry bodies to the cemetery never arrived.

Red Cross volunteers put more than 100 bodies into body bags, leaving them in a pile outside the morgue.

They said three of the bodies were patients who drowned in their beds when floods engulfed the hospital.

Renel Corvil, a 32-year-old farmer, said he had come to the morgue every day since Saturday to look for his four missing children.

On Tuesday, he found them. But after waiting all day for bodies to be taken to the cemetery, he left to bury a fifth child that already had been transported to the graveyard.

As they waited, survivors exchanged tales.

"I saved a lot of people," Corvil said, lifting his arm to show how he helped neighbors climb trees. "Everyone in my neighborhood who survived had climbed a tree."

Destilor Aldajus, a 50-year-old farmer, said he and his six children climbed onto their roof. But he was at the morgue looking for his wife.

"I couldn't find her, but I knew the water had taken her," said Aldajus.

It was not known how many bodies were swept out to sea from Gonaives, whose sprawling seaside slum of Raboteau was still waist-high in water Tuesday.

Dieufort Deslorges, spokesman for Haiti's civil protection agency, said he expected the death toll to rise as reports come in from outlying villages and rescuers dig through mudslides and rubble.

Deslorges said rescue workers reported recovering 691 bodies by Tuesday -- about 600 of them in Gonaives and more than 40 in northern Port-de-Paix.

Noel Madiro Morilus, director of Terre Neuve agriculture department, said 17 people died in that farming center north of Gonaives. It was unclear if all 17 were included in the civil protection agency's count.

Deslorges said some 250,000 people were homeless across the country, and the storm destroyed at least 4,000 homes and damaged unknown thousands more.

Some 1,056 people were missing, almost all from Gonaives, Deslorges said.

"It's really catastrophic. We're still discovering bodies," said Francoise Gruloos of the U.N. Children's Fund.

Eight helicopters from a Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeeping force shuttled shipments of water, food and supplies to Gonaives on Tuesday because travel by road was difficult, said Argentine Lt. Col. Gaston Irigoyen, a spokesman for the force.

About 450 Argentine troops in Gonaives were picking up the dead, treating the wounded and providing food and water Tuesday, he said. Brazilian and Jordanian troops also were struggling to help the needy, all from the U.N. peacekeeping mission sent to stabilize Haiti after rebels ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February.

The aid group Food for the Poor said the main road north from Gonaives was made impassable by the storm -- it was unclear whether from mudslides or debris -- and there were fears that hundreds of possible flood victims may be out of reach.

Aid vehicles mobbed
Chilean troops in trucks traveled from northern Cap-Haitien on Tuesday trying to reach the Gonaives area, but could not get through roads made impassable by the storm, Irigoyen said.

U.S. Marine Capt. Mamie Ward, a spokesman for the U.N. force, said World Food Program trucks made it to Gonaives from Port-au-Prince, the capital in the south.

CARE spokesman Rick Perera said his international aid agency had about 660 tonnes of dry food in Gonaives.

Irigoyen said they planned to distribute the food and water on Wednesday. That could produce a riot among survivors, many of whom said they had not eaten since the storm.

A police officer in Gonaives said aid vehicles were having trouble getting into the city because people were mobbing them.

One truck made it to the central City Hall, only to be attacked by people who squeezed inside and threw packets of the water it was carrying into the crowd.

People screamed and scratched around in muddy waters for the water bags. Finally, the driver took off, with people falling off the truck as he screeched away.

'Totally unequipped'
Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Haiti's interim president, Boniface Alexandre, pleaded for urgent emergency help "in the face of this tragedy."

The European Union sent US$1.8 million worth of urgent aid Tuesday, said EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson.

Venezuela is sending US$1 million and a boat loaded with food, water, tents and a rescue squad, Information Minister Andres Izarra said.

On Monday, the U.S. Embassy announced $60,000 in immediate relief aid. That was criticized by U.S. Congressman Kendrick Meek, a Democrat who represents Miami-Dade and Broward counties, as "a drop in the bucket."

"The government of Haiti is totally unequipped and unable to deal with this massive crisis, because they have neither the resources nor the organization," Meek said.

"Private voluntary groups are reportedly overwhelmed by the enormity of this crisis."

Floods are particularly devastating in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, because it is almost completely deforested, leaving few roots to hold back rushing waters or mudslides. Most of the trees have been chopped down to make charcoal for cooking.