PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Sandy gone, Caribbean mourns 58 dead, cleans up - Americas Wires - MiamiHerald.com
While Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas took direct hits from the storm,
the majority of deaths and most extensive damage was in impoverished
Haiti, where it has rained almost non-stop since Tuesday.
The
official death toll in Haiti stood at 44 Saturday, but authorities said
that could still rise. The country's ramshackle housing and denuded
hillsides are especially vulnerable to flooding when rains come.
"This is a disaster of major proportions," Prime Minister Laurent
Lamothe told The Associated Press. "The whole south is under water."
He
said the death toll jumped on Saturday because it was the first day
that authorities were able to go out and assess the damage, which he
estimated was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the bulk of it in
lost crops.
Nineteen people are reported injured and another 12 are missing, according to Haiti's Civil Protection Office.
One of the remaining threats was a still-rising muddy river in the northern part of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
"If
the river busts its banks, it's going to create a lot of problems. It
might kill a lot of people," said 51-year-old Seroine Pierre. "If death
comes, we'll accept it. We're suffering, we're hungry, and we're just going to die hungry."Officials reported flooding across Haiti,
where 370,000 people are still living in flimsy shelters as a result of
the devastating 2010 earthquake. Nearly 17,800 people had to move to
131 temporary shelters, the Civil Protection Office said.
Among
those hoping for a dry place to stay was 35-year-old Iliodor Derisma in
Port-au-Prince, who said the storm had caused a lot of anguish.
"It's
wet all my clothes, and all the children aren't living well," he said.
"We're hungry. We haven't received any food. If we had a shelter, that
would be nice."
Santos Alexis, mayor of the southern city of
Leogane, said Saturday that two people were reported dead there,
including a man in his late 30s and a boy around 10 years old who
drowned. He said the city was hit by heavy rains but that no major
damage was reported.
"Water came into the houses, water got on the
beds, but they didn't lose their homes," he said. "Leogane was
underwater mostly, but now we have less water."
President Michel
Martelly and Lamothe handed out water bottles to dozens of people in a
Port-au-Prince neighborhood on Friday. They also distributed money to
local officials to help clean up the damage.
Sandy left dozens of families homeless when it barreled across Jamaica Wednesday as a Category 1
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