GONAIVES, Haiti – Rescuers pulled bodies from floodwaters that raged through parts of Haiti’s third-largest city, sweeping people from their homes and forcing survivors to spend the night in trees, atop cars and on rooftops after Tropical Storm Jeanne. The death toll rose to 622 Monday night after dozens more bodies were recovered.
Most of the deaths occurred in the northwestern city of Gonaives, said Dieufort Deslorges, a spokesman for Haiti’s civil protection agency.
“The water is high. As it goes down, we expect to find more bodies,” said Touissant Kong-Doudou, a spokesman for the U.N. mission..
Jeanne’s torrential rains claimed victims from Haiti’s southern peninsula to the north-coast town of Port-de-Paix, he said. At least 500 were killed in Gonaives.
“I lost my kids and there’s nothing I can do,” said Jean Estimable, whose 2-year-old daughter was killed and another of his five children was missing and presumed dead. “All I have is complete despair and the clothes I’m wearing,” he said, pointing to a floral dress and ripped pants borrowed from a neighbor.
About a third of the dozens of bodies stacked in Gonaives’ flood-damaged General Hospital were children.
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.
In Gonaives, a city of about a quarter million, people waded through ankle-deep mud outside the mayor’s office, where workers were shoveling out mud and doctors treated the wounded.
Deslorges described the town’s situation as “catastrophic.” He said survivors “need everything from potable water to food, clothing, medication and disinfectants.”
Katya Silme, 18, said she, her mother and six siblings spent the night in a tree because their house was flooded.
“The river destroyed my house completely, and now we have nothing. We have not eaten anything since the floods,” she said.
Silme said she saw neighbors swept away in the waters Saturday. As she spoke, two dead children lay on a nearby porch, their faces covered with cloths.
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