Haiti floods leave 45 dead
Pastor Dale Morgan
Haiti floods leave 45 dead*
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 12 (AFP) Oct 13, 2007
At least 45 people have died in the poverty-stricken island of Haiti as
homes were swept away in floods triggered by heavy rain, the interior
ministry said Friday.
Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aime told AFP 23 bodies had been
found Thursday in Cabaret, just north of the capital, and 12 were
missing after floodwaters hit their hillside homes, sweeping them away
in the current.
"The water carried off people living in houses built on the hillside,
sweeping them into the town," the minister said.
More than 6,000 people have had to leave their flooded homes in Cabaret,
where neighborhoods have been completely submerged, witnesses told radio
stations in Port-au-Prince.
The mountainous and impoverished Caribbean island nation faces regular
flash-flooding during the rainy season. Deforestation, which heightens
the risk of flooding, is rife as the poor collect every scrap of wood
for cooking.
Civil protection authorities said thousands of families were displaced
and hundreds of homes destroyed or damaged across the country. Roads
were swamped and plantations wiped out.
"Farming has been particularly affected and numerous crops have been
destroyed," Bien-Aime said.
Apart from Cabinet, further casualties were reported in other villages
after more than a week of rain. The ministry said the provisional death
toll for the whole of the country was at least 45.
The government released funds to send food and beds to the stricken
areas and the United Nations has offered to help. It already has
thousands of peacekeepers in the country, whose problems were compounded
by violent political strife in recent years.
In eastern Cuba, just west of Haiti, civil defense officials evacuated
more than 18,000 people amid flooding concerns from the same weather
system, which damaged at least 1,000 homes there.
And in Nicaragua at least 1,000 were evacuated in the Chinandega region
of the northeast, were a flood alert was issued, emergency services told
AFP. Heavy rain there has caused major rivers to flood their banks.