More Flooding Ike Hits Haiti

I talked to Luc Joseph at 2:30pm today. He said hurrican Ike was causing more flooding, even at his new house construction site. At the time his family and the Orphans were on the roof of the house, the wind was blowing hard causing the phone connection to be difficult. However he did say he was able to buy some food for the children.

Haiti gets more of the same.

Ike's floods add insult to Haiti's misery, kill 10 from The Associated Press.


Residents leave the area in the back of a pick-up truck after heavy rains in Gonaives, Haiti, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008. Hurricane Ike damaged most of the homes on Grand Turk island as it roared onto the Bahamas, raked Haiti's flooded cities with rain and threatened the Florida Keys on its way to Cuba as a ferocious Category 4 storm Sunday.


Residents wade through a flooded street after heavy rains in Gonaives, Haiti, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008. Hurricane Ike damaged most of the homes on Grand Turk island as it roared onto the Bahamas, raked Haiti's flooded cities with rain and threatened the Florida Keys on its way to Cuba as a ferocious Category 4 storm Sunday.








Residents wade through a flooded street after heavy rains in Gonaives, Haiti, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008. Hurricane Ike damaged most of the homes on Grand Turk island as it roared onto the Bahamas, raked Haiti's flooded cities with rain and threatened the Florida Keys on its way to Cuba as a ferocious Category 4 storm Sunday



Haitians took to their roofs to escape rising floodwaters Sunday for the second time in a week as squalls from Hurricane Ike added insult to their misery, inundating homes and collapsing a bridge on the last open land route for aid to the desperate city.

Five adults and five children drowned overnight in the coastal town of Cabaret north of Port-au-Prince, civil protection director Marie-Alta Jean Baptiste said, raising Haiti's overall death toll to 262 from four tropical storms in recent weeks.

Above Haiti's coastal floodplain, in the Artibonite Valley, authorities prepared to open an overflowing dam, inundating more homes and possibly causing lasting damage to Haiti's "rice bowl," a key farming area whose revival is key to rescuing the starving country.

Associated Press © 2008

CNN Reports

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) -- A ship carrying 33 tons of U.N. relief supplies managed to dock Friday, the first significant aid delivery after four days without food or water for thousands of survivors from Tropical Storm Hanna
Soldiers with assault rifles stood guard in the crumbling port while dockworkers offloaded 15 metric tons of relief supplies from the capital of Port-au-Prince. The container ship was loaded with bottled water, 36,000 water-purification tablets, 16 metric tons of high-energy biscuits and 2 metric tons of rice, along with cooking oil and other supplies managed by the U.N. World Food Program.
Belching white smoke from its stack, the Tres Rivieres ship was able to dock after the Argentine soldiers worked through the night with heavy equipment to drop boulders into a gap in the pier left by the storm. They aimed to distribute the biscuits and water within hours to emergency shelters, where 40,000 people were marooned and increasingly desperate.
Hanna's floodwaters inundated more than half the homes in Haiti's fourth-largest city when it struck on Monday, and corpses surfaced in the muddy wreckage Friday as floodwaters receded, raising the known death toll to 137.
But the break in the weather is expected to be short -- Hurricane Ike, now a Category 3 hurricane -- could sideswipe Haiti this weekend, even as international aid groups struggle to reach thousands of victims.
"I am worried because the soil is completely impregnated with water, and there is no way for the rivers to take more water," said Max Cocsi, who directs Belgium's mission in Haiti of Doctors Without Borders. "We don't need a hurricane -- a storm would be enough."
Cocsi, who arrived in Gonaives on Thursday, told The Associated Press that no one knows how many have been killed. The focus now is on reaching the living, not recovering bodies.

Views of the Gonaives Area Flooding

Some 250,000 people are affected in the Gonaives region, including 70,000 in 150 shelters across the city, according to an international official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Hanna's death toll rises to 137 in Haiti

9/4/2008, 9:57 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press

GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) — Haiti's government says the death toll from Tropical Storm Hanna has more than doubled to 137, with most of the deaths coming in the flooded port city of Gonaives.
The Ministry of the Interior and the Civil Protection Department issued statements Thursday saying that 80 of the deaths were in Gonaives, which has been almost entirely cut off by floodwaters from Hanna.
Virtual lakes have formed over every road in the city and officials are attempting to get food and water to residents who were stranded.

Another 22 deaths were confirmed in areas immediately surrounding the coastal city.
The rest of the deaths were scattered across the country.
The previous death toll had been 61
© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Rescuers can't get aid to starving Haitian city

Posted on Thu, Sep. 04, 2008

By JONATHAN M. KATZ
Associated Press Writer

GONAIVES, Haiti --
The convoy rumbled out of the U.N. base toward a flooded, starving and seething city Thursday, carrying some of the first food aid since Tropical Storm Hanna drowned Gonaives in muddy water three days ago.
Hungry children at three orphanages were waiting for the canvas-topped trucks, loaded with warm pots of rice and beans and towing giant tanks of drinking water.
The trucks didn't make it.
The convoy crept over mud-caked, semi-paved roads past closed stores, overturned buses and women wading in water up to their knees with plastic tubs on their heads.
After about 45 minutes, the half-dozen trucks ground to a halt. U.N. peacekeepers wearing camouflage fatigues and bulletproof vests jumped out while others stood guard with assault rifles.
Before them, a huge gouge marred the road. The floods had split the asphalt, and water ran through the 10-foot-wide (3-meter-wide) gap.
The convoy turned around. And the children - like tens of thousands more in this increasingly desperate city - went another day without food.
Some 250,000 people are affected in the Gonaives region, including 70,000 in 150 shelters across the city, according to an international official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. Argentine Lt. Sergio Hoj estimated that half of Gonaives' houses remained flooded Thursday.
Many houses were torn apart. Families huddled on rooftops, their possessions laid out to dry. Overturned cars were everywhere, and televisions floated in the brown water.
Gonaives - a collection of concrete buildings, run-down shacks and plazas with dilapidated fountains - lies in a flat river plain between the ocean and deforested mountains that run with mud even in light rains. Hanna swirled over Haiti for four days, dumping vast amounts of water, blowing down fruit trees and ruining stores of food as it swamped tin-roofed houses.
The official death toll rose to 61 on Thursday as Hanna finally moved north with near hurricane-force winds on a path toward the southeastern U.S. coast. But in the chaos there was no way to know how many people might be dead, or how many had been driven from their homes. Two other storms killed 85 people in August, and forecasters warned that fearsome Hurricane Ike could hit Haiti next week.
Haiti's government has few resources to help. Rescue convoys have been blocked by floodwaters, although the U.N. World Food Program said Thursday it was sending a food-laden boat to Gonaives from the capital, Port-au-Prince, and would set up a base in the stricken city.
In the capital, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mari Tolliver said $250,000 in relief supplies arrived in Haiti Thursday, including jugs of drinking water, and would be sent to Gonaives by boat or plane.
"The idea is to get it there within the next day or two. Every effort is being made," she said, adding that another $100,000 will be used to buy bedding, kitchen items and other goods for victims.
"The situation in Gonaives is catastrophic," Daniel Rouzier, Haiti chairman of Food for the Poor, wrote in an e-mail. "We, just like the rest of the victims ... have limited mobility. You can't float a boat, drive a truck or fly anything to the victims."
Anger and frustration was growing at the inability or unwillingness of the government and the international community to help.
"If they don't have food, it can be dangerous," warned Sen. Youri Latortue, who flew in by helicopter. "They can't wait."
Dozens of people gathered around the gates of the U.N. base. Some children climbed cinderblock walls topped by barbed wire to ask soldiers inside for food. Edgy U.N. peacekeepers went on a heightened state of alert, and have traded their floppy hats for helmets.
Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the U.N. Development Program who just returned from Haiti, admonished international donors to do more.
"The poverty in the rain and mud of Haiti that I witnessed is nothing less than a disgrace," he said. "Many actors or potential actors try to play their part, ranging from the national government to multilateral and bilateral donors and NGOS. They all need to do more and better."
The few aid-group representatives in Gonaives did what they could - but knew it wasn't enough.
A local coordinator for the Florida-based Food for the Poor charity sailed through the flooded streets in a 22-foot fishing boat and picked up survivors, including two men struggling to keep afloat.
"The whole town is destroyed," Bernard Chauvet told The Associated Press over his cell phone as he headed for dry land, his boat jammed with 22 people including a pregnant woman and several crying children.
"These people lost everything," he said. "They have no water, no food. It is very bad."
Up to 400 people huddled in the Roman Catholic Church and the residence of Bishop Yves-Marie Pean, turning it into a de facto refugee camp. Many camped out on the watery grounds, while the lucky ones rested on chapel pews.
"We have shared with them what we had, but now we don't have food or drinking water," Pean said by telephone. "What is left is for the babies. We are praying together in solidarity in this very difficult moment."
Chantal Pierre, 19, somehow made it to the gates of the U.N. base, which is occupied by mostly Argentine troops. Soldiers carried her on a stretcher into a gym and laid her gently down. She went into labor amid the weightlifting equipment.
Minutes later, at a makeshift hospital on the base, she gave birth to a healthy girl.
A day earlier, Dorlean Nadege, 26, had given birth at the same place. Both babies slept in their mothers' arms Thursday. The doctor, Julio Cesar Lotero, said Pierre would leave on Friday, but Nadege would stay because her home was destroyed by floodwaters.
"She has to stay here," he said. "She has nowhere to go."

Associated Press writers Danica Coto and David McFadden in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

Food & Water

Dear Friends in Christ
Pray that God would provide a miracle in the form of food and water and safety, for Luc’s family and the 25 children in his care. The largest city is cut off at present even the UN cannot access the area to provide aid. It will require your prayers and Gods hand to meet the daily needs of those in distress.
Haiti simply has no infrastructure, and although they have appointed officials to meet the needs of the people in crisis the reality is much worse than most Americans can imagine.
Pray that God would move is all that Luc has asked for in my last 2 conversations with him.
We want to help but sometimes we are frustrated when we can do nothing immediate but pray, don’t be frustrated, PRAY.
If God speaks to you to help, the best help at present is money. It will take 30 days to ship supplies and we may well do that but it takes $ donations to make any of this possible.
We do need cash relief funds.
WORLD RENEWAL INTL
PO BOX 399, GREENFIELD, IN 46140.
317-467-9899
LOVED ONES IN HAITI is the relief fund.
The quickest method is checks by phone. We can receive Master and Visa cards however there is a delay in receiving those funds from the card service.
All funds received will be used without WRI taking any administration fees.

Max R Wright
World Renewal International Haiti-Rep