Death toll nears 700 in storm-ravaged Haiti

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, September 21, 2004

GONAIVES, Haiti – Blood swirled in knee-deep floodwaters as workers stacked bodies outside a hospital morgue Tuesday. Carcasses of pigs, goats and dogs floated in muddy streams that once were the streets of this battered city. Desperate people swarmed a truck delivering water.

The death toll across Haiti from the weekend deluges brought by Tropical Storm Jeanne rose to nearly 700, with 600 of them in Gonaives, and officials said they expected to find more dead.

Tens of thousands of people were left homeless.

Waterlines up to 10 feet high on Gonaives’ buildings marked the worst of the storm, which sent water 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 2 feet deep 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 on Monday.

Flies buzzed around bloated corpses piled high at the city’s three morgues, which were without electricity was off as temperatures reached into the 90s.

Only about 30 of the 250 bodies at the morgue of the flood-damaged General Hospital had been identified, said Dr. Daniel Rubens of the International Red Cross. Many of the dead there were children.

Dieufort Deslorges, a spokesman for the civil protection agency, said he expected the death toll to rise as reports came in from outlying villages. He estimated a quarter-million Haitians were homeless.

More than 1,000 people were missing, said Raoul Elysee, head of the Haitian Red Cross, which was trying desperately to find doctors to help. The international aid group CARE said 85 of its 200 workers in Gonaives were unaccounted for.

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

Brazilian and Jordanian troops with the U.N. peacekeeping mission sent to stabilize Haiti after rebels ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February struggled to help the needy as aid workers ferried supplies of water and food to victims.

CARE spokesman Rick Perera said the agency had about 660 tons of dry food in Gonaives, including corn-soy blend, dried lentils and cooking oil, and was trying to set up distribution points.

Police said aid vehicles were being waylaid by mobs on the outskirts of Gonaives. One truck that made it to City Hall in the town center was swarmed by people who began throwing its load of bagged water into the crowd, setting off a melee. The driver finally sped off, bouncing people off the truck.

The European Union sent $1.8 million in urgent aid, to be distributed by the Red Cross and other aid agencies, according to EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson.

Venezuela’s government is sending $1 million, as well as a boat loaded with food, water, tents and a rescue squad, Venezuelan Information Minister Andres Izarra said.

On Monday, the U.S. Embassy announced $60,000 in immediate relief aid, an amount criticized as “a drop in the bucket” by U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., whose district includes some of the Miami area’s Haitian community.

“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 in a statement. “Private voluntary groups are reportedly overwhelmed by the enormity of this crisis.”