Flood Toll Rises to 1,950 in Haiti and Dominican Republic

By REUTERS

A Haitian family in Fond Verrettes, near Mopou, wept yesterday for relatives lost in floods caused by heavy rain on the island of Hispaniola.


Published: May 27, 2004


ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 26 - The death toll from devastating floods and landslides in Haiti and the Dominican Republic rose to at least 1,950 on Wednesday with the discovery of more than 1,000 bodies in a Haitian town.

The bodies were found in Mapou, a rural southeastern town where communications are poor, said Margareth Martin, the head of the civil protection office for the region.

Rescue workers dug through mud and debris for bodies three days after torrential rains sent rivers of mud and swirling waters through Hispaniola, the Caribbean island shared by Haiti's 8 million people and the Dominican Republic's 8.5 million.

Haiti's death toll stood at 1,660, including 1,000 in Mapou, 500 elsewhere in the southeast, 158 in the riverside town of Fond Verrettes, and 2 in the south, at Port-a-Piment.

The Dominican authorities said they had recovered 300 bodies, mostly from Jimaní, near the Haitian border, where a river overflowed its banks before dawn and swept homes away as people slept.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/international/americas/27cari.html

heart goes out to them.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1671438

We would like you to see it

Action by Churches Together (ACT) - Switzerland
Website: http://www.act-intl.org
Alert - Update

Dominican Republic/Haiti - 2/2004

Floods and Landslides

Geneva, 27 May 2004

The death toll and damages caused by the devastating floods and landslides in the border areas between the Dominican Republic and Haiti continue to rise. According to official reports the death toll in the Dominican Republic has risen to 233 while in Haiti it has risen to 358.

ACT member in the Dominican Republic, Social Service of the Dominican Churches (SSID) report that they are visiting the affected areas to distribute relief items and to assess damages. They are co-ordinating the response with the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Haiti.

ACT members in Haiti - Christian Aid (CAID), Fédération Protestante d'Haiti (FPH), Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and Service Chrétien d'Haiti (SCH) - have been in contact with the LWF staff and the Support Group for Refugees and Repatriated People (GARR – a partner of CAID) working in the affected areas. According to their report 528 persons have lost their lives and 1,500 are injured. There are extensive damages to houses and crops and access to the area is only possible by air. The needs for medical care, food, water and clothing are great. They are co-ordinating with the UN agencies and other international NGOs working in Haiti as well as with the ACT members in the Dominican Republic.

more
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/108566141916.htm

FOND VERRETTES, Haiti Health officials feared that as many as 1,000 people could be dead in a single Haitian town from floods that wiped out villages across Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a figure that would nearly double the death toll from the disaster.


In the Haitian town of Mapou, as many as 1,000 people could be dead, said Margarette Martin, the government's representative for the southeast region, in nearby Jacmel. About 300 bodies had been counted, said Dr. Yvon Lavissiere, the health director for the region.
.
Martin said officials believed that hundreds more may have died in the town. She said that houses were submerged and that rescuers had seen bodies under water that they had not been able to retrieve. Mapou, a valley town of several thousand people about 60 kilometers, or 30 miles, southeast of Port-au-Prince, was cut off from the outside.


At least 417 bodies were recovered in the Dominican Republic. Officials there said that about 400 people were missing. Of more than 450 bodies recovered in Haiti, about 100 were found in the southern town of Grand Gosier, according to the director of civil protection, Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste.


Survivors wandered the barren site, in shock. "For a while we didn't even realize what we were standing on," said Lance Corporal Justin Collins, one of about 20 U.S. marines who were distributing food. "We were standing on some parts of a neighborhood." FOND VERRETTES, Haiti Health officials feared that as many as 1,000 people could be dead in a single Haitian town from floods that wiped out villages across Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a figure that would nearly double the death toll from the disaster.

more
http://www.iht.com/articles/522087.html

Thousands Killed, Missing After Floods in Haiti, Dominican Republic

Search and rescue efforts continue in Haiti and the Dominican Republic after days of heavy rain caused flooding that has killed close to 2,000 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
Many of the victims in the Dominican Republic died before dawn on Monday, caught off guard by waters rushing over river banks and washing away their homes while they slept. The Dominican Republic’s National Emergency Commission reported that some areas received more than 10 inches of rain in two days of torrential storms over the weekend.

The Dominican Red Cross has sent teams to the affected areas to provide search and rescue assistance, emergency medical care, supplies, and other support. The storms also created rivers of mud that washed away thousands of homes and caused extensive damage to crops and livestock in both countries. Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for.

The Pan-American Disaster Response Unit, a regional, highly-specialized disaster response division of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, is actively engaged in damage assessments of the affected areas with the Red Cross societies of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. An American Red Cross delegate to the Federation has also arrived on the scene to join the response team and support the ongoing relief efforts.

more
http://www.disasterrelief.org/Disasters/040527Haiti/index_txt.html

http://tnew.onepaper.com/deals/?v=d&i=&s=Caribbean:Ecology&p=66506
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - Trucks loads of deforestation
by Pardise News/DR1.com
September 14, 2003
Hoy newspaper highlights the depredation of removing gravel and sand from the Haina River by trucks that are under the custody of military. The newspaper said that while the extraction of the construction materials is prohibited, more than 15 trucks were seen transporting truckloads of sand. A soldier interviewed by the reporters said, "There are so many trucks, we have lost count." He added, however, that he could not do anything "because a general is involved, and I do not want to be fired."

Hoy reports that construction companies backed by the support of high-ranking military members have been extracting the materials. In the community, the Ministry of Environment prohibited the removal of the materials, which did not appear to hinder the influential companies. Hoy newspaper reported that mechanic shovels work rapidly to load the 14-16 cubic-meter trucks.

Reporters said they observed more than 15 trucks leave in less than 20 minutes. Witnesses said that when an Hoy photographer was detected, one person, driving aboard a pick-up truck with official license plate OCO-2224, left the site, where eight trucks remained behind waiting for their cargo.

The construction company has allegedly extracted considerable construction materials, under the guise of using it to repair a stretch of highway between Hato Nuevo, one of the affected communities, and Km 22 of Duarte Highway.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3750473.stm

and



_{Bare slopes have little protection when the rains come}

In the Dominican Republic the situation is somewhat better - around 15% of the country is still forested. To the modern eye this might seem plenty. But 200 years ago almost the entire nation would have been wooded. Research conducted seven years ago concluded that logging, mainly by local people to clear land for agriculture, was a major factor.

Ruined land

When heavy rains come to land which is not bound together by tree roots, the soil is simply washed away. River banks disintegrate, and water can pour through settlements unimpeded by natural barriers.

snip....

The severity of these rains is highly unusual for Hispaniola, raising the question of whether they are a consequence of climate change.Computer models of global warming do predict that the frequency and strength of tropical storms will increase, but it is impossible to link one particular weather event to a slowly changing global climate.

"Research conducted seven years ago concluded that logging, mainly by local people to clear land for agriculture, was a major factor."

Where do you get that we took their wood? America is responsible for plenty or problems without getting blamed for more.....

Multinational corporations buy up all the good farmland from the US-client government at bargain basement prices, thus pushing all the subsistence farmers into the wilderness. These subsistence farmers then clear (ie., slash and burn) an area of woodland or rain forest to grow their crops, but since the soil is often poor, they only get a few seasons out of it before they have to move on to another area, and so on.

So, no -- the trees, etc... don't usually end up as lawn furniture in the US, but the displacement of subsistence farmers is often for the sake of growing produce for Western markets.

Of course, there is also plenty of deforestation in South America that's done directly for the sake of Western development projects, but I don't think that's as common in Haiti and the Dominican Republic -- mostly because the land that's not already deforested isn't particularly good for construction.

in logging the tropical hardwoods..

Jungle deforestation, in general, is a HUGE problem..wordwide.

Indonesia has had horrific mudslides and flood damage from deforestation..

The local people just see the immediate cash in hand , when they help log their interior.. When the rains come,the ones who profitted from the sale of that mahogany, ebony, etc...are long gone...

The silt chokes their water supplies, kills the fish they rely on..etc..

And lots are in denial.. When we were in Tahiti last fall, I saw mahogany growing everywhere...I asked the driver if they were protecting their native stands of it, and he said.."Oh, yes"!...

Not 5 miles down the road, I looked up at a hillside, and sure enough, mahogany was being logged...