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09/23/2004:

"Haiti Flood Death Toll Could Reach 2,000"

by Amy Bracken
GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) - Workers used dump trucks to empty more than 100 bodies into a 14-foot-deep hole on Wednesday - the first mass grave for the more than 1,070 flood victims of Tropical Storm Jeanne. Bystanders shrieked, held their noses against the stench and demanded that officials collect bodies in waterlogged fields. The government late Wednesday said up to 1,250 people were still missing and that the death toll could rise to 2,000 people.

Meteorologists, meanwhile, said Jeanne could strike the United States by this weekend. It was too soon to tell where, but the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned people in the northwest and central Bahamas and along the southeast U.S. coast to beware of dangerous surf and rip currents kicked up by Jeanne in the coming days.

At 5 p.m., Jeanne was centered about 500 miles east of the Bahamian island of Great Abaco. It was moving west-southwest and was expected to strengthen and turn toward the west in the next 24 hours. Hurricane-force winds extended 45 miles and tropical-storm force winds another 140 miles.

In Gonaives, U.N. peacekeepers fired into the air to keep a hungry crowd at bay as aid workers handed out the first food in days for some in this city devastated by the floods. Residents were growing impatient because of decaying bodies and a lack of food and drinking water.

"We're demanding they come and take the bodies from our fields. Dogs are eating them," said Jean Lebrun, a 35-year-old farmer. "We can only drink the water people died in."

Dieufort Deslorges of the government's civil protection agency said 1,013 bodies had been recovered in Gonaives and 58 elsewhere. He said some of the missing likely died and that their bodies washed out to sea.

In Gonaives, rescuers pulled bodies from mud and rubble - some still under water five days after Jeanne lashed the area with torrential rains for some 30 hours - then added them to the pile in body bags that lay in mud and grime in front of three morgues.

Full Article: myway.com