Hurricane Tomas moves north after killing six in Haiti
by Clarens Renois
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 6, 2010 (AFP): Hurricane Tomas moved toward the
Turks and Caicos Islands early Saturday after killing six people in
Haiti and lashing the poorest country of the hemisphere with fierce
winds and rain.
But it appeared to have spared the hundreds of thousands of Haitians
who rode out the storm in flimsy tent camps.
Rains continued off and on for hours after the storm moved on to
Cuba, and flooding cut off some parts of the country while authorities
warned of the heightened risk of mudslides.
"All departures and arrivals at Toussaint Louverture airport (in
Port-au-Prince) are cancelled. Normal traffic will resume on Saturday,"
airport authorities said in a statement. The southern town of Leogane
was completely under water, said Philippe Joseph, a civil defense
official, who said water was three meters (10 feet) deep in parts of the
town.
"We are going to have more victims because of the floods and
mudslides, but we cannot yet reach the communities most affected," he
told AFP. In Port-au-Prince, Haitians were up to their ankles in water
in some of the huge refugee camps that have grown up around the city
since a devastating earthquake that killed 250,000 people in January.
But the canvas and tarpaulin shelters that hundreds of thousands of
people call home appeared to have withstood the storm better than
expected, thanks to pre-storm preparations, including hastily dug
drainage ditches and sandbag barriers. "So fortunately for them we can
say that they appear to have made it through," Andrea Koppel of the
American Red Cross told CNN.
However, six people were reported killed in floods and house
collapses elsewhere in Haiti.
Two of the dead were in Leogane, two more died in the towns of
Beaumont and de Leon near the city of Jeremie, and a fifth died in the
town of Anglais, Haitian media reported.
A sixth person was reported killed Thursday before the storm hit as
he tried to cross a rain-swollen river in a vehicle in Grande Anse.
Many smaller towns in western Haiti were cut off from the outside
world after flooding damaged already neglected roads in rural areas that
were difficult to pass in good weather. |