Flood
Toll Soars To 2,000
By Sibylla Brodzinsky
27 May , 2004
The Guardian
The
death toll from mudslides and flooding in the Dominican Republic and
Haiti soared to around 2,000 last night as rescuers discovered more
than 1,000 bodies in a ruined Haitian town.
The border region
between the two Caribbean countries, which share the island of Hispaniola,
has been devastated by water and mudslides which have engulfed the area
after 10 days of heavy rain. Entire villages have been swept away by
a vast tide of mud miles long and several hundred metres wide.
Haitian officials
said more than 1,000 bodies were discovered in Mapou, a remote town
near the border that was all but destroyed. Another 500 people were
killed elsewhere in south-eastern Haiti and 158 in the riverside town
of Fond Verettes. Some 300 bodies had been recovered in the Dominican
Republic, with hundreds more still missing.
The death toll makes
the disaster the worst on the island for more than a generation. More
than 800 died in a tropical storm which caused flooding in Haiti 10
years ago, while in 1998 a hurricane killed 229 in the country. More
than 1,000 people were killed, most of them in the Dominican Republic,
in a 1979 hurricane.
"The rain came,"
said Manie Ceceron, destitute after the devastation in Fond Verettes
and the loss of her five children. "I was in the house and I ran.
I couldn't see anything. I didn't see my children. I never saw my children."
The catastrophe
struck in the early hours of Monday when villagers in the two impoverished
countries were still asleep. Rivers swollen by the heavy rains burst
their banks and surged through set tlements, destroying hundreds of
houses and sweeping off victims. Some bodies were carried several miles.
The floodwaters
sent thousands of tonnes of rocks and sediment through some villages.
The death toll was particularly high because Haiti is 90% deforested,
and poor people on both sides of the border mostly live in wooden shacks.
In Fonds Verettes
the flooding swept away the tax office and courthouse.
Only half of the
police station remained, Reuters reported. The Haitian justice minister
and acting interior minister, Bernard Gousse, said: "We are sending
shelters and food supplies to affected areas."
Troops from a US-led
multinational force sent to stabilise Haiti after Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
the president, was ousted three months ago, flew into the hard-hit Haitian
towns yesterday, taking bottled water, medicines and food.
"It appears
there have been many victims that have been washed out of the village
or may be buried underneath the rubble," said Colonel Glen Sachtleben,
the chief of staff of the multinational force.
In the Dominican
Republic, President Hipolito Mejia declared a day of national mourning
for Thursday.
One man, Jude Joseph,
who had gone to Jimani, the worst affected town in the Dominican Republic,
from Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, to sell rice at a border market
and visit family members in Bobmita, La Cuarenta and Barrio El Tanque,
found all those neighbourhoods swept away. "I've been left with
nothing," said the 30-year-old, whose nine relatives were still
missing. Another resident, Norma Cuevas, was desperately looking for
her 63-year-old mother along with dozens of other families searching
for signs of life.
José Luis
German, a spokesman for the Dominican Republic's national emergency
commission, said relief workers were continuing to claw through the
mud looking for survivors, aided in the search by sniffer dogs.
Although many of
the bodies have been identified, dozens of unidentified victims have
been buried in mass graves.