Death Toll Rises to 2,000 in Haiti, Dominican Republic

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, June 1, 2004 (ENS) - At least two thousand people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are thought to have been killed and hundreds more are still missing following torrential rains and flooding that started eight days ago. Many of the survivors are homeless and dependent on international aid to remain alive.

Heavy rains have fallen over the Dominican Republic and Haiti on the island of Hispaniola for more than two weeks, causing serious flooding throughout the two countries.

Flooding in the Haitian border area (Photo courtesy WFP)

The world's largest humanitarian agency, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), has been laboring to bring emergency supplies to the hardest hit areas.

On Monday, the WFP delivered 60 tons of emergency food rations to the survivors of the floods on Hispaniola, the Caribbean island that shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

On the Dominican side of the border, the town of Jimani was devastated. Throughout the Dominican Republic entire communities have been swept away by flood waters, cutting off villages and affecting more than 1,200 families. In Jimaní alone, some 300 bodies have been recovered and another 361 people are still reported missing.

The flooding has not been confined to the countryside. In Santo Domingo, some 400 families in the communities of Saguasa and Chirino were cut off when the Ozama River burst its banks.

Forty tons of food was sent by helicopter to Fond Verrettes, a Haitian farming town of 45,000 to the northeast of the capital Port-au-Prince near the border with the Dominican Republic.

The only road leading to Fonds Verrettes has been cut off in several places by water, and air transport is the only way to reach the area, the WFP and other aid agencies said.

According to a UN mission to the area on May 25, more than 1,000 homes have been destroyed, 4,000 domestic animals have been drowned, and banana, corn and bean crops have been destroyed. There is no electricity and little clean drinking water.

Subsistance farmers of Mapou line up for humanitarian assistance. (Photo courtesy IFRC)

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) has launched an emergency appeal for funding in the amount of $717,000 to pay for assistance to the survivors.

The IFRC's Marko Kokic, who traveled to Mapou, explains why the funds are so urgently needed.

"Many bodies have been buried without being identified," he wrote. "With many homes still underwater, it is difficult to assess the exact number of dead. It is likely that many of these humble dwellings contain the bodies of more people caught by surprise by the flash floods and landslides that devastated this rural community early on Monday morning."

Local authorities and humanitarian agencies are struggling to deal with removal of the corpses to make sure that this natural catastrophe is not compounded by a public health disaster.

The IFRC is bringing in inflatable dinghies with outboard motors to search for cadavers, and possibly survivors, in the flood zone, and especially in the inundated homes.

"In flood situations like this," Kokic wrote, "an important challenge is to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases, and during our mission to Mapou, we made sure that villagers were taught how to chlorinate their wells and purify water for drinking."

An IFRC worker enters a flooded farm to search for survivors and corpses. (Photo courtesy IFRC)

Today, Haiti will lose the assistance of some 1,900 U.S. troops, brought in February 29 to restore order after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was routed by rebels, but now working to help victims of the landslides and floods.

The U.S. forces control the few helicopters being used to reach areas like Mapou. Over the past week, they have brought in more than 50 tons of food and drinking water to affected communities and airlifted the injured to hospitals.

Due to the magnitude of damage caused by the flooding, on May 26 U.S. Ambassador to Haiti James Foley issued a disaster declaration. In response, USAID provided $50,000 to the USAID mission in Haiti to assist in the disaster response efforts.

USAID will provide $40,000 to Catholic Relief Services to purchase and distribute emergency non-food relief supplies, including hygiene kits, cooking kits, blankets, and water containers. USAID will also provide up to $10,000 of fuel for use by Haiti's Ministry of Public Works for urgent road repair in the affected area. USAID advisors are on standby to deploy to the affected area if necessary.

In place of the U.S. troops, a United Nations peacekeeping force of about 8,000 troops is set to arrive in Haiti today. They will find an unstable situation in the flood affected areas.

While water levels have dropped somewhat, the floodwaters are being held back by temporary dams composed of debris from the landslides. If more rain falls, officials fear these shaky dams could collapse at any time.