Perilous Times and Climate Change
At least 20 dead after Hurricane Tomas hits Haiti
Agence France-Presse November 8, 2010 – 9:55 am
PORT-AU-PRINCE — At least 20 people were killed when Hurricane Tomas
hit Haiti at the weekend, triggering flooding and mudslides that also
left some 6,000 families homeless in the impoverished Caribbean nation,
officials said Monday.
The hardest hit region was Haiti’s far southwestern department of
Grand’Anse, where nearly 900 homes were destroyed and another 5,000
were damaged as the storm skirted Haiti, civil defense authorities
said, adding that 36 people were wounded.
Tomas was the first hurricane to batter the country since a cataclysmic
earthquake in January killed 300,000 people and left more than a
million homeless, and struck as Haiti was grappling with a broadening
cholera epidemic that has left 500 people dead.
Authorities and aid groups have expressed fear that Tomas could further
devastate a nation trying to rebuild, as the government had only been
able to accommodate some 100,000 people in schools, churches and
hospitals ahead of the hurricane — a fraction of those left homeless by
the earthquake.