Tropical Storm Hanna kills 21 in Haiti

Storm kills 21 in Haiti
Published Wednesday September 3rd, 2008

SAINT-MARC, Haiti -- Haitian families scrambled onto rooftops and screamed for help yesterday in a city flooded by Tropical Storm Hanna, as UN peacekeepers and rescue convoys tried in vain to reach them.

By last night, Hanna claimed 21 lives in Haiti, including 12 dead in the state containing the cutoff city of Gonaives, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste of the country's civil protection office in Port-au-Prince, the capital.

Iris Norsil, 20, managed to flee Gonaives on Haiti's western shore and said that people there were isolated by muddy floodwaters as evening fell, seeking refuge on rooftops as wind gusts drove horizontal sheets of rain.

Floodwaters rose rapidly outside Gonaives, where Norsil and scores of other residents who abandoned the low-lying city shivered violently in soaked clothing, nervously eying the rushing, debris-clogged waters.

"The situation is as bad as it can be," said Vadre Louis, a UN official in Gonaives. "The wind is ripping up trees. Houses are flooded with water. Cars can't drive on the street. You can't rescue anyone, wherever they may be."

Hanna's maximum sustained winds slipped to 104 km/h, but the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it could regain hurricane strength and turn toward the east coast of Florida, Georgia or South Carolina in two to three days.

What has the present government done to prepare for the Hurricane season? The president was once a PM, and he knows that this natural phenomenon occurs each and every year and yet it appears as if there was nothing done to prepare for this situation.
Will we once again mobilize to aid our brothers and sisters in need? Will the dollars, the goods and the containers be stolen and hijacked again?
Bondye bon!!!!